


Bolt

by Zeborah



Category: White Collar
Genre: Alternate Universe - Slavery, F/M, M/M, Multi, Rape/Non-con - Freeform, Suicidal Ideation, domestic abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-13
Updated: 2014-07-30
Packaged: 2018-02-08 16:16:16
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 18
Words: 29,283
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1947771
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zeborah/pseuds/Zeborah
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <em>"They're going to make you a slave for this, you know." Three strikes as a free person will do it; so will committing another crime while in prison for the first. Either one proves a pattern that society doesn't want to continue.</em>
</p><p> </p><p>This is the pattern: Neal tries to escape; Peter catches him. It's probably for the best. What other slaveowners would be as good to him as Peter and Elizabeth?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Skipper

**Author's Note:**

> This is a completed work in 18 chapters. I'll post a chapter a day, so if you prefer to read your stories all at once come back in a few weeks. Tags cover the work as a whole.

The first time Neal tries to escape isn't the first time Peter catches him. What Peter doesn't know right now is that it won't be the last, either.

He says, "They're going to make you a slave for this, you know." Three strikes as a free person will do it; so will committing another crime while in prison for the first. Either one proves a pattern that society doesn't want to continue.

"I don't care," Neal says despondently.

Peter looks at him sympathetically. Kate's definitely not going to be visiting him weekly now. But Neal could have predicted that, and he still couldn't help himself. Peter's not the biggest fan of slavery — it's got a terrible history and in his job he sees too many abuses of it — but he can't argue that if anyone's demonstrated a pattern of crime it's Neal Caffrey. If it hadn't happened today, it would have happened five years and millions of dollars' worth of damage down the road. "Ehh, it's probably for the best."

Neal looks at him. He shakes his head, and stands up. "What do you mean?"

"You'll have someone to keep you out of trouble."

He huffs in disbelief. And then something distracts him on Peter's shoulder, and with wary movements he plucks a fibre off the jacket. "You know what this is?"

Peter laughs ruefully. "No idea. I got it from a case I was supposed to be working on before they yanked me off to find you."

They can hear the Marshalls and the other agents moving in from downstairs, shouting to each other. Neal asks, "You think you'll catch him?"

"Don't know. He's good. Maybe as good as you."

Neal snorts, and seems to calculate something. "What's it worth if I tell you what this is?" It's a predictable attempt to buy his freedom; Peter's unimpressed. Neal backpedals: "Is it worth a meeting?"

"What are you talking ab—?"

"If I tell you what this is, right now, will you agree to meet me back in— in the Centre — in one week?"

Peter feels his interest stir, and by 'interest' he means 'cock'. He's hardly even thinking about the fibre or the case it's from: this is all _What's Neal Caffrey planning now?_

"Just a meeting," Neal says with all the persuasiveness of the con artist he is. The Marshalls are close now, clearing the hallway like they're up against a whole terror cell. Neal doesn't have a lot of time. Quickly he says, "It's a security fibre for the new Canadian hundred dollar bill," and hands the fibre back to Peter. Like a promise.

Like it's Peter's promise, though he hasn't said anything. He's too suspicious of Neal's motives. It really gets his engine running, thinking about what kind of mischief he's going to have to curb this time, but that doesn't mean he's going to fall for it.

He watches them handcuff Neal and take him away. Over his shoulder, Neal reminds him, "One week."

One week, he thinks, and okay, he's already tingling in anticipation. One meeting: where's the harm in that?

One week already seems too long to wait.


	2. Flyer

It's only when she and Peter are getting into bed that first night that El realises how exhausting it's been settling in a new... member of the household. Not that Neal's given them any trouble. In fact he's been unfailingly charming and amenable, and adorably appreciative of having the run of the shower and a bedroom of his own. It makes it so much easier, being able to pretend he's just a houseguest. A permanent houseguest. Who's legally their dependant.

Whatever.

It's just all the things she doesn't usually have to think about (no, he mustn't call them 'Master' and 'Mistress' when they've got perfectly good names; yes, of course they want him to eat at the table with them) or the things she takes for granted (food scraps get sorted for compost and Satchmo; the rolling pin goes in the third drawer, spatulas in the second). Being three people around the house instead of two.

So it's nice to be alone in bed with Peter, snuggling in to his side with a contented sigh—

And a shrill alert on his cellphone.

"What's that?" she asks, not recognising the sound.

"Unbelievable!" Peter says in exasperation, and is out the bedroom door in his boxers before she can finish sitting up.

She grabs her robe and follows him to Neal's room. The light's on, the window's open, Neal's collar sits discarded on the bed, and Neal himself, with damp hair and a towel around his waist, stands backed against the wall holding his palms out in propitiation. "Peter— Oh, wow, this must look bad."

"Yeah," Peter says, shutting the window with an emphatic thump, "it really does."

"Just hear me out," he begs. "Okay? The room was a bit — don't get me wrong, Elizabeth, it's lovely, I just thought it could do with some fresh air."

It is a bit musty, El has to admit. It was meant as a guestroom once, but they just don't have guests that often. But Peter isn't the slightest mollified. "You took your collar off!"

"It was getting _really_ annoying."

"That doesn't mean you can just _take it off_!"

"Why not?" he asks in what sounds like genuine bewilderment.

Peter splutters. "You're a slave. Slaves wear collars. Slaves don't just take their collars off when they feel like it."

"This isn't just some arbitrary rule," El adds quickly. "Wearing that collar protects you just as much as it protects us. All sorts of things happen to slaves when people think they're being nice sending them out without their collars."

"But I'm not out," he reasons. "I'm at home with my two kind and generous owners. What exactly do I need protecting from?"

She opens her mouth and shuts it again, feeling like the conversation's got offtrack somehow.

"Just put it back on," Peter grits.

With a shrug, Neal picks it up off the bed and puts it back around his neck. It clicks fast and he smoothes the black silicon sleeve over the join in the metal.

El steps forward to look at it, and he sways away from her. "Oh, honey," she says, suddenly twice as glad that they didn't wait for him to finish his training in the Processing Centre, "I'm not going to hurt you, I just want to see." He licks his lips nervously and nods, and stands still for her — heat radiating off his skin from his shower — as she gives it a few gentle tugs. Ugh. Silicone's a boon to baking and confectionery, but there's something deeply unsettling about the feel of it under her fingers: like solid slime. No wonder he wanted the collar off. But even when she rolls back the end of the sleeve and tugs the collar again, it doesn't budge in the slightest. "How did you get it off?"

"Poked the safety catch." He points to something on the bed: a paperclip.

Peter snatches it up, snapping, "That's not a safety catch, it's a lock."

Neal blinks. "Oh," he says, and on reflection flashes a bright smile. "Whoops?"

"Don't pretend— You were trying to escape!"

He rolls his eyes lightly. "Right. With no plan, nowhere to go, only a towel between me and the altogether, and a fifteen-foot drop to a sprained ankle."

"Oh, I'm sure you had a plan," Peter retorts, even as his eyes flicker down to the towel and back, and darken. His own boxers aren't hiding anything, and El feels the pleasant twist in her own groin. If she weren't so tired she'd have a much harder time keeping her hand off Neal's still heat-pinked shoulder.

Peter prods, "Maybe something to do Kate? She didn't want you when you only had four months left on your sentence, what makes you think she'd want you as a fugitive? Or did you think you could win her over with all the art and money we haven't recovered yet?"

El's about to slip in a calming word before things get too hurtful, but Neal's already retorting, "Is that why you bought me?"

"Hey," she says sharply, "you _asked_ us to— to buy you, remember?" They talked about the stolen property, of course; how could they not? Even though most of it will go back to Neal's many victims, half of anything that can't be identified will belong to them as his... well, owners. But it had _nothing_ to do with their actual decision. "We agreed because you promised you'd help Peter catch the Dutchman and because we thought we'd be the best thing that could happen to you right now. And if this is how you're going to behave you're lucky we did. You know if you'd done this to anyone else they wouldn't be standing here _talking_ right now!"

He opens his mouth, and quickly shuts it under her glare and folded arms. With a shake of his head he dispels whatever he'd been about to say and replaces it with, "You're right. You're right, Elizabeth. I'm a smart guy. I should know how lucky I am."

"Okay," she says, and makes herself drop her arms again. She really hadn't meant to be shouting at their slave on his first night here. Or ever. But they do have to do something about this. She looks at Peter — he rolls his eyes in resignation — and tells Neal, "Now you're going to apologise for trying to escape, and then you'll have to sleep in our room for tonight. It's a big bed, there'll be room at the foot for you to stretch out."

He nods quickly and soberly. "I'm sorry for opening the window and taking my collar off—"

"For trying to _escape_ , Neal," Peter corrects.

He hesitates, then says, "You were right, I knew I wasn't meant to—"

"Neal!"

In frustration he says, "Look, I know you don't believe me, but I'm trying not to lie to you here. Can we just, I don't know, skip to the punishment part and then get some sleep?"

El's heart melts a little at his plaintive tone. He's been so cheerful all evening that she forgot this is as much an adjustment for him as it is for her and Peter. And if they _have_ been falsely accusing him—

Peter meets her eyes in disbelief. "El, come on." She returns an expressive look.

"I'll sleep on the floor," Neal offers.

Peter exhales heavily, but concedes the field with a gruff, "Get some pyjamas on."


	3. Wingman

Peter gets Neal a better collar, nails shut the window in his bedroom, and for good measure puts a bolt on his door. Each morning either he or El unbolts it, and they go about eating breakfast before hunting the Dutchman. Until on Thursday morning he comes down from shaving, picks up his steaming coffee mug, and asks, "Where's Neal?"

El, rummaging in her purse, says absently, "He went up to tell you coffee was ready."

"No," Peter says, setting his mug down with a thud and a splash, "he didn't."

She meets his look, and upends her purse on the table. He's never been quite sure how she can get so much into there, but right now they're more interested in what isn't there. "He's taken my phone," she says in betrayal — "and my car keys."

"I'm going to kill him," Peter promises darkly.

"Save some for me," she calls after him on his way out the door.

It's a little distracting how turned on he is as he strides to his own car. (Sure enough, no sign of El's anywhere on the street.) But when he gets the app on his phone working and sees where Neal's headed, he laughs, all else forgotten.

*

Neal's waiting for them when they storm the warehouse, a grin on his face in counterpoint to Hagen's — the Dutchman's — furious scowl. That triumph stirs something in Peter again, but he's too busy with Hagen and all this evidence in glorious plain sight to give it much thought.

By the time he's done with them, Neal's smoking a Cuban cigar. "You should arrest me," he jokes.

"I'll let the cigar go, but you are a fugitive slave."

Neal pulls an earnestly sober face. "I was just taking photos," he says, producing El's phone, "like you wanted me to—"

"Oh, like I wanted," Peter scoffs, but warmly: he might actually be able to sell that in his report.

Neal gives a happy little nod-shrug. "And then they brought me in here. They stole me, Peter."

"And this is why slaves always wear collars," Peter lectures him.

Agreeably Neal hands over the scarf he's been disguising it with, and after a moment's thought adds El's car keys. Then he looks over to an open safe in the corner and Peter can't help but grin: it's the original Victory Bond that Hagen had been in the middle of counterfeiting.

When they join the team outside, everything's settled down. Diana and one of the Harvard Grads are shepherding Hagen and Gaines into separate cars, and Jones reports, "We've got five slaves to take back to the Processing Centre."

"Five?" Neal says, and at Jones' sharp look adds a hasty, "Sir. Sorry, sir, I'll just—" He zips his mouth.

Peter frowns suspiciously. "Did you see more?"

"I just thought someone would have grabbed the chance to run, Master."

_Master_. It feels odd being called that in public, like... like he's a slaveowner. The bad kind. He shakes the discomfort away and teases, "I guess they're smarter than you, huh? Knew I'd catch them."

Jones says, "I'll check the perimeter again," and Peter lets him go. Just in case Neal _did_ manage to smuggle someone out while also smuggling himself in. He's pulled off wilder stunts, after all.

But a counterfeiter, a murderer, and their five slaves isn't a bad haul considering Peter still hasn't had his morning coffee.


	4. By a Thread

El's having a pretty terrible day.

Firstly because Peter's off meeting a murderer in Central Park to resolve a hostage situation. They're both pretending it's no big deal because he doesn't want to worry her and she doesn't want him to think she's worried. Besides, she knows he'll have all kinds of backup. And yet: murderer. So there's that.

Next because Neal complained twice last night, and once this morning, and has been sulking ever since, because he couldn't go along and has to help El with event planning instead. They both know his intentions are good. That's the problem: he wants to help and he wants to protect Peter, and that just reminds El again, in case she'd forgotten, that her husband's walking into unknown dangers here.

Finally because between her worry, Neal's sulking, and her decorator's utter nitwittery, she can't seem to stop herself snapping at him. Not once (netting her a hurt look), not twice (making him sulk all the harder), but (hissing at him in a semi-private corner of the reception venue, "You really need to fix your attitude, mister!") three times.

And his eyes flash pure _anger_ , but before she has time to even blink in surprise he shakes it away into a chagrined expression. "Yes, Mistress," he says, eyes meekly cast downwards.

She feels like the floor's shifting under her, and all she can latch onto is another snappish, "You know I don't like being called that." It's bad enough when people are listening and he has to.

"I'm sorry, Elizabeth," he says as promptly, and it's no better at all. Apparently _everything_ is going to make her angry today.

She takes a breath and lets it out. "This needs to stop." She needs some space to calm herself down. She's tried giving him work to do throughout the day, and he's done it wonderfully well. But either it's so menial he sighs and looks bored as he plods through it, or it's complex enough that he has to keep coming back to her for decisions, and right now both are driving her up the wall. She doesn't like the only other option she can think of, but it _is_ the only other option she can think of. "I want you to wait for me here. On your knees," she specifies reluctantly, because people mightn't be listening but they are looking.

He nods and kneels at once without complaint. Instant obedience. It's... relaxing. And makes her feel guilty. But he kneels so elegantly— She shakes her head and turns back to where Yvonne's been trying to make the decorator see reason. She can make it up to Neal tonight, when they're all home and safe and happy.

*

She gets the worst of it sorted, and the decorator ducks out to his car to fetch some sample books. She and Yvonne share a look of exhausted relief.

"Mistress?" Neal says tentatively from the corner. She mentally curses: she'd actually forgotten about him. His knees must be killing him. "I could get you a coffee?"

"Yes," she says gratefully. "That'd be wonderful. —Yvonne?"

"No, thanks," Yvonne says. "I'll try getting hold of Philip again."

El frowns as she turns away to dial; and when moments later she hangs up on another busy line El asks in concern, "Is something wrong?"

There's a moment of hesitation before Yvonne laughs it off. "I just can't stand my coffee not being exactly right."

But it's Fashion Week, and Fashion Week means international attention, and international attention means abolitionist protests, and Yvonne's never made any secret before of where her sympathies lie there. El's never disagreed with her. "You know I don't really like slavery. Neal's just a really special case."

"You don't have to justify yourself to me, Elizabeth. It's none of my business."

But she wants Yvonne to understand. "Peter arrested him. Twice. And he _asked_ us to buy him. It's better than letting him be bought by someone who only wants him for his skills at forgery." Or for that unrecovered stolen property that he's never mentioned since that first night and they've carefully never asked about. They're still building trust; they really don't want him thinking the money is all they care about.

"I'm sure he couldn't have better owners," Yvonne says politely.

As unsatisfying as it is, that's the point at which the decorator comes back in with his samples. They flip through the books, making their selections and double-checking numbers. Halfway through, a cup of coffee appears in her hand. She's drunk half of it before she quite registers it's a takeaway cup.

"I'll catch up with you," she tells Yvonne when they're finished, and goes over to where Neal's waiting again on his knees in the corner, not very far from her purse. "Neal," she says, and he stands carefully, "you know there's a kitchen right there."

He blinks at the door as if it just appeared out of thin air. El levels a look at him, and he crumbles, eyes pleading for understanding. "I just thought if I could get some fresh air, clear my head..."

"Get a coffee for yourself?" she suggests.

He smiles tentatively. "They make a great mocchiato." Then more seriously, "Elizabeth, I'm really sorry. I've just been out of sorts all day, but I shouldn't have taken it out on you."

"It's not just about the case, is it?" she guesses.

He looks unhappily away.

"Neal, you've got to tell us when something's bothering you. We're responsible for you. We want you to be happy."

"I know, I just..." She waits him out and finally he admits, "I can't stop thinking about Kate."

"Oh, honey." She gives his arm a squeeze. Someone's sent Peter a photo of Kate with what looks like an FBI agent in San Diego, but there's no sign of a warrant out for her arrest. It's set Peter's spidey senses tingling, and now he's keeping a quiet eye on her, just to make sure she doesn't come anywhere near Neal. But she hasn't even tried.

"I know she said goodbye, when she visited me that last time. It just happened so quickly it doesn't really feel like _I_ did." He lets her rub his arm, and finally says in frustration, "It's stupid. I should be able to just imagine it, just... _picture_ myself saying goodbye."

"What if you didn't have to imagine it?" she asks on a sudden thought. "They recorded that visit, didn't they?" Peter mentioned using it when he investigated Neal's escape.

He looks briefly hopeful, then sags again. "Peter would never get that for me."

"I'll talk to him," she decides.

His face opens up in delight, like the sun breaking through a clouded sky. "You'd do that?"

"No promises," she warns, but it doesn't dent his newfound good mood. And she feels a lot better herself, being able to do something nice for Neal after a day of nonstop telling him off. She _will_ convince Peter, and that's that.


	5. Seconded

Peter huffs at the waves off the end of the pier. He hates letting go of cases at the best of times, let alone when Ruiz is going to completely screw them up if left to himself. But Hughes has made it pretty clear that he's off this one and that's final.

Neal, standing close by — because this is _very_ public so Peter can't let him get away with sitting down like he would back at the office — suddenly says, "Wow, you know, getting a little chilly by this water — aren't you? Think I can borrow your jacket?"

Peter's wearing an FBI windbreaker, which makes Neal's thought process pretty transparent, and ten times as outrageous. Of course, 'outrageous' is Neal's MO. Not one day after he watched the tape of Kate's last visit (over and over and over, but El insisted on indulging him) he was asking after the bottle-that-meant-goodbye. Give him an inch and he wants a mile — but free reign with an FBI windbreaker would let him get just a few hundred miles too far for Peter's taste.

"I swear to you, Peter, under no circumstances will I impersonate the FBI."

"No, you won't, because I'm not lending it to you." And then he has a second thought. "But I can lend _you_ to Ruiz."

"What?" He drags his heels as Peter pulls him back towards the crimescene. "No, Peter, that's a really bad idea. Peter!" he repeats in a more urgent whisper. "I really don't think you've thought this through." He shuts up when they reach Ruiz, though, and even manages to look appropriately subordinate.

Ruiz is sceptical. He doesn't like the idea of letting a recidivist help out in a criminal investigation, but the promise that he and not Peter will be in charge of him wins him grudgingly over.

But as Peter's turning to go, Neal darts after him. "Master!" With a glance over his shoulder he whispers, "Peter, I need your phone."

He hisses back, "I'm not giving you my phone with the tracking app."

"Elizabeth will still have hers. Look, if I'm going to be spying on him I need to be able to call you with information."

"You're not spying on him, you're making sure he doesn't screw up this case. Now get back there."

Neal opens his mouth; Peter points; and he drops his head and obeys.

Ruiz cuffs his shoulder, which makes Peter bristle. If anyone's going to hit Neal it should be him or El, and they decided right back when this started that they were never going to do that. But even if they don't like violence themselves, it's not an unreasonable reproof. So when Neal sends a pleading glance back at him, Peter shrugs expansively. Maybe it'll teach him to appreciate what he has.

*

It's getting late, the bullpen thinning of even the enthusiastic Harvard Grads, when his phone rings. He checks the screen and answers it: "Hello, Ruiz."

"Peter, listen," says Neal in a quick hushed tone. "Ruiz is screwing up the whole case, and I can't do anything about it. He's too stupid even for reverse psychology."

Peter puts a hand over his eyes and says with a sigh, "Does he know you're calling me?"

In a strained voice he admits, "Not... as such."

"You picked his pocket."

There's a pause. "Does it count as picking his pocket if I took his pants too?"

"How on earth did you get him out of—" He stops, hears Neal's confirming silence, and grits his teeth. He's going to kill Ruiz. "Where is he?"

"Nineteenth floor gents."

"Fine," he grits. "Toss his pants in and get up here."

"But Peter," Neal says angelically, "I thought you'd want to do it."

His mouth opens to disagree and doesn't quite get around to it: a sudden smile is stretching his lips instead. Trust Neal to land on his feet and walk away laughing. Peter can go down there with the pants, assure Ruiz that _of course_ he won't tell a soul, and by the way would he like a hand with his case?

That's not blackmail. It's not even half what he deserves for a stunt like this.

He hangs up and jogs down through the bullpen. "Jones," he says on impulse as he passes his desk, "have you still got that bottle?"

"You want it now?" Jones asks at once.

"Yeah, I'll be back in a few minutes."

Down two flights of stairs and around a corner Neal's waiting for him, a 'Cleaning in Progress' sign helpfully barring the way into the men's room. He gives Peter the phone, the neatly folded pants, and a disappointed look when Peter tells him to stay put.

Peter pushes the door open and is almost instantly greeted with a quick, "Who's there?"

"Hello, Ruiz," he says, and lets the door swing shut again.

The silence from the stall is satisfyingly heavy, as is the accusing, "You set me up."

"Oh, you brought this all on yourself," he returns.

"Yeah, it's not _my_ slaveboy running wild."

Nettled, Peter reminds him, "I loaned you Neal to help with the case. But you just couldn't keep it in your pants."

"The hell you talking about, Burke? He spilled ketchup on my pants, so I told him he could damn well clean them. In the basin," he clarifies, in a tone scathing of any alternative interpretations. "One minute he's drying them under the hand dryer, next minute he's gone and I realise my phone's missing from my jacket."

Peter frowns at the scattered drops of water around the basin.

"Who the hell takes their pants off to fuck a slave?"

He winces heavily. "I didn't set you up, Ruiz."

"Whatever, Burke. You want the case, take it. Just give me my goddamn pants back."

Goddamn Neal. He passes the pants and phone over the stall door and Ruiz snatches them down. "Look," he offers, "we both want to catch this murderer. Why don't we share what we know. Work together, you can get your arrest."

There's a suspicious pause. "You gonna leave that brat at home?"

"Don't worry," he says grimly, "I'll deal with him."

They make brief arrangements for the morning. Outside, Peter grabs Neal's arm and unceremoniously drags him back down the corridor.

"Ow," Neal complains mildly, and looks over his shoulder as they round the corner to the elevator. "Did you get the case?"

"Don't even talk to me."

Neal is silent all of the four seconds it takes to get in the empty elevator and hit the buttons. With the doors closed, he starts, "What—"

"You lied to me," Peter interrupts angrily.

Neal gives him a look as if dealt a mortal wound. "Peter, I did not—"

"Don't— You knew exactly what I was thinking and you let me."

"Because that's what happened, Peter!" He pauses as the door opens, but only to lower his voice. "Why would I—"

He pushes him out and floorwards. "Get down there and wait for me," he says, and doesn't stay to watch how slowly he obeys. The door swings behind him three times as he strides in through the bullpen. In his office he collects a stack of casefiles and his coat, and glares balefully through two layers of glass at Neal, kneeling with arms resentfully folded.

Jones comes in with the bottle in a brown personal belongings bag and a knowing glance out at Neal in disgrace. "You still want this?" he asks.

Peter's tempted to tell Jones all about it, let off some steam. But what good does he think that'll do? Jones has never even rented a slave: figures he gets enough of criminals at work. Or thinks they'd cramp his style with the ladies, if you listen to him on other days. He'd probably just think Peter should call it a loss and sell Neal back to the Centre already. And who wouldn't?

"Yeah," Peter says instead, and takes the bag. "Thanks."

As he approaches, Neal stands without meeting his eyes, gets the elevator, and relieves him of the casefiles. It's classic Neal: the show of subservience without any of the feeling behind it.

"We get home," Peter says as the elevator heads down, "you're going straight to your room, and you're not coming out until you admit the truth."

"Do I get a hint?" Neal retorts.

"Come on, Neal! He takes his pants off for a blowjob? And then he lets you walk out the door with them?"

Neal looks away.

"Oh, _that_ shut you up."

"Maybe I don't want to talk about it," he says sulkily.

Peter bites back another retort, more of the same. They stand both in dour silence until the elevator opens and they can walk, Neal dourly silent at his heels, out to the street. He's probably already planning how long he can hold out for in his room. He needs something that'll actually get through to him, and Peter has just the thing. A half-dozen yards from the car he stops and faces him. "I'll give you a choice. Admit the truth, or smash this."

Neal takes the bag in his spare hand, and freezes as he recognises the shape of it. "Peter..."

"You going to admit it?"

He swallows and shakes his head. "Please—"

"So smash it."

"I can't," he says pleadingly. "Peter, please—"

"Admit it, then."

Unhappily he shakes his head again, but he seems to be gearing up to a decision. And then he dashes Peter's casefiles to one side and to the other darts straight out into traffic with the bottle.

It's a neat fork — he can't let details of an open mob-related murder investigation get loose — but Peter's too angry to admire the sheer gall of it. "Stop that slave!" he shouts, grabbing up the files. Even for a busy Manhattan street, more passers-by than he expected ignore him, or glance over and away again. One openly spits, obviously taking him for the kind of slaveowner someone _has_ to run from. But still by the time he's got his files and dodged the traffic, a couple of guys have got Neal on his knees, head buried under his arms against the sidewalk. They wave away his thanks and hurry on their separate ways while Peter catches his breath. "You done?" he asks Neal.

He nods quickly, his own shoulders heaving.

The bottle's dropped barely an arm's length away. Even from the shape of the bag Peter can tell it's broken in the fall. He stomps on it twice to be sure, and grinds it under his heel. Neal's fists clench and then open helplessly. "That's for running," Peter tells him. "Now tell me what happened with Ruiz."

Voice muffled, Neal says, "He didn't... ask me to do that. I tricked him and I knew you'd be angry."

It's an empty victory. He has Neal toss the battered bag of broken glass in the trash and takes him back to the car. Silently they drive home, where without a word Neal trudges up to his room. Peter lets him go: he has El to face. But he couldn't have — they just can't — let Neal keep running.


	6. Other Side of the Coin

Neal's pacing his room again. On the sofa, El feels Peter pull away from her in frustration, and opens her eyes to see him reaching for the remote control. She snatches it off him and says in a low voice, "This is ridiculous. We're in our own house, we should be able to spend some time together without having to drown him out with kitchen appliance commercials."

Peter nods grimly. "I'll talk to him."

"No." He and Neal have mended their bridges and even built a sweet bantering relationship, but it's fragile. If Peter has to tell him off again it risks another blow-up. She kisses him, and stands up. "I'll be back in a minute."

As she starts up the stairs she can hear Neal muttering to himself, but by the time she reaches the top — as always — he's stopped. When she opens his door he's standing there looking lost and hopeless.

"I didn't realise I was doing it again," he says apologetically.

"Oh, honey." She steps forward and brushes the lonely lock of hair off his brow. "We thought we should leave things until you'd got over Kate, but it's not working, is it? You're lonely _now_."

"Eliz—"

She stops the appeal with a kiss. His mouth opens under hers, hot and sweet, and that instant compliance makes her press deeper, hungrier.

—And then he's tearing himself away, stumbling back to the wall. "You don't get it, Elizabeth. This isn't about not having sex, it's about not having freedom."

"We want to give you more freedom, but—"

"It's not freedom if someone has to give it to you."

"You're right," she says in frustration, "I don't get it. You never had any problems in prison. Here you've got more room, better clothes, better food, work you enjoy, people who care about you—"

He shakes his head, as if everything they're giving him is nothing. "But you could take it all away any time you want."

"Is that what this is about? Neal, we're not going to do that."

"But you _could_ ," he insists.

"You're not making any sense."

He swallows the wildness that's making his voice rise, and tries, "How would you feel if you were someone's slave, and—"

"That wouldn't happen," she says a little too quickly. She remembers those two arrests — the fake ID, and the streaking, but they were just misdemeanours. Okay, a few years back there was talk from the far right about tightening the three strikes law even further, backed by big business hoping for cheaper labour. Peter pulled strings and got the misdemeanours expunged just in case, but nothing ever came of the talk anyway. It was always a ridiculous proposal. No-one would have ever voted for it; even big business crunched the numbers and realised there was no point in cheap labour if no-one was left to buy their product.

"Hypothetically," Neal says. "If you belonged to someone for the rest of your life—"

For a moment _the rest of her life_ seems a roaring chasm, and she only pulls herself back from the brink by remembering how she had the same headspinning thought the day before her wedding, and it turned out to be the best thing ever. "That's what Peter and I have," she says. "And it's what we're giving you. You'll get used to it, Neal. I promise."

He looks at her bleakly. She leans in to give him another comforting kiss, and he turns his head to one side. "Peter's waiting for you. I won't pace."

She purses her lips. Things clearly aren't resolved, for him to still be turning away from her like that — but he's right about Peter. "We'll talk about this more tomorrow," she says, and kisses his forehead before she goes back down.

*

That conversation makes it a little disconcerting, the next morning, to be sitting in Peter's office and trying to convince him to help prove that Dana's husband is innocent. Especially when Neal bursts in with a cheery, "I found that file!" Seeing El and taking the room's temperature, he adds, "This can wait," and turns to go.

She lets him, rather than have to admit that his hypothetical law-abiding-citizen-turned-slave is feeling just a little less hypothetical for her today.

Then Peter reads off his computer, "This says whereabouts unknown. Is he on the run?"

Neal hears and promptly backtracks. "Is this a friend of yours?" he asks in genuine concern.

"It's Dana's husband. He's at his brother's. I didn't know the address," she justifies herself to Peter.

In horror he hisses over the desk, "If you're keeping that information, that's aiding and abetting."

Neal asks, "Does he have any priors?"

"Not helpful, Neal," Peter grits.

"What? Two convictions and he'd be better off making a dash for Canada, because no jury's going to believe—"

"Okay, okay, stop! That's not how trials work, okay?" Neal looks like he's going to dispute the point, and Peter presses on, "Even if it happened, that's what appeals are for."

He cocks his head. "Could I make an appeal?"

Peter laughs. "You're not innocent."

"Isn't that for a jury to decide?"

"No, because we're not letting you try it on."

"You can stop me?"

"Yeah, Dr Sheppard. Slave, owners, remember how this works?"

Neal frowns more in thought than resentment. "If slaves can't appeal without permission, then how—"

"This is all beside the point," El interrupts. She's not sure whether she's more discomfitted by the idea of Neal in his current mood pulling some judicial con to escape them, or by the idea of a really innocent person having trouble accessing their right of appeal. She shakes both thoughts away and reminds them, "John doesn't have a record and he didn't steal this gold either."

"Honestly, I think he should turn himself in," Neal says, and to her relief falls in with her in convincing Peter to take the case, to prevent John Mitchell from being convicted in the first place.


	7. Profile

Peter's with Lauren, gathering up their casefiles in the conference room, when Jones comes back from walking the curator of the Channing out to the elevator. "Walter happy with his painting?" Peter asks.

"Already planning the publicity," Jones says.

Lauren asks Peter curiously, "Hey, is it true the museum actually stole the painting from Julianna's grandmother?"

"She says Haustenberg left it to her in his will, but there's no proof." He shakes his head with a rueful laugh. "You know, Neal actually wanted to give the Channing a forgery, give the original back to Julianna."

"I guess that's why he's been sulking all day," she comments.

"And all night," Peter says feelingly.

Jones, who usually keeps a wary distance from Neal, admits, "At least he pulled off the meet."

"Yeah. You know," he adds on a thought, "people always seem more convinced by him as a free man than as a slave."

"Well, sure," Lauren says, "he's a white guy." They both blink at her, and she looks up from the files she's stacking with a _Did I just say that out loud?_ expression on her face. She adds awkwardly, "You know. People see what they expect to see."

Statistically, she means, there's still a lot more Black and Hispanic slaves than white. It's been well over a hundred years since slavery had anything to do with race, but there's the legacy of history and poverty, and illegal immigration by people who figure the risk of being caught and enslaved is a small price to pay if their children will be free American citizens. But times are changing. Hell, they've even got a Black president now. That's got to mean something.

Jones agrees: "My grandaddy always says it don't matter what people see, it's what you do that rings them bells."

"Yeah, sure," Lauren agrees in turn and goes back to her files.

Jones shifts as if he's about to leave them to it and Peter puts in, "Hey, where's he got to, anyway?"

"Uh, something about photocopy paper. Want me to send him up when he's done?"

"Yeah," Peter says, and then abruptly changes his mind. "No. He filled those this morning."

He dumps his files and heads for the door. There's a second lost as Jones steps out of his way in the wrong direction, but once they've untangled themselves he's striding down the stairs and through the bullpen. He doesn't bother checking the stationery cupboard. Instead he goes straight to the elevator and mutters under his breath all the way down. Rationally he knows it's faster than running down twenty flights of stairs, but Neal's got a headstart, dammit.

When he hits the lobby he calls to the security guards, "Hey, you seen my slave?"

"Neal? Yeah, he just gave us your note."

He snatches it without slowing: his own handwriting asserts he's sending Neal to pick up sandwiches. Unbelievable. "You took a signed note from a known forger?" he demands, and slams out through the door to the bustling Manhattan streets.

Left, right, and through the crowd he spots Neal's head ducking into a cab. He bursts into a sprint, dodging the obstacles that don't make way for him, and reaches the spot as the cab pulls out into traffic. One second too late to thump its trunk, and for a moment he thinks this is what it's come down to: that one second dodging Jones back in the doorway.

But then the cab pulls over not ten yards on, and he jogs gratefully up to it. As he opens the door he catches the Black cabbie handing a bill back to Neal with an apologetic, "Gotta get out, man."

"No need," Peter says, getting in. Neal shoves over in defeat. "Where're we going?"

"Oh," the cabbie says in dismay, looking like if he was alone he'd be swearing, "sir, I really apologise. He told me he had to pick someone up at Grand Central."

"Okay, let's go see what's at Grand Central."

The cabbie pulls out again as Neal protests, "Come on, Master, you caught me escaping, we really don't need to—"

"Oh, no no no," he says, belly warm with the thought that the chase isn't over yet. "You never just admit you're trying to escape. What's really there?"

"Apparently there's this oyster bar that's—"

"Oh, an oyster bar. Not sandwiches? Or photocopy paper?"

"Photocopy paper?" he echoes with a blink.

"Like you told Jones?" Peter reminds him. "Forgetting your own lies now?"

"I... may or may not have mentioned that if people would just print double-sided it'd s— save..." He looks down at the hand Peter's just placed on his thigh, and breathes a little between open lips. As Peter looks on with interest he cuts the crap and opts for the much simpler, "I'm sorry, Master."

Peter cocks his head, turning the mystery over in delight. "This is about Kate, isn't it?"

He shakes something off and looks up with a rueful smile. "You got me. I heard she was going to be there today at noon, but—"

"How did you hear?"

"Master," he says cajolingly, "honestly, you're wasting a cabfare."

"Oh, I'm getting my money's worth." He slides his fingers a little forward and Neal's eyes turn pleading. In a low, intent voice he repeats, " _How_?"

"When I borrowed Mistress's phone—"

"Stole it," Peter corrects.

"To help catch Hagen," he counters, and he does have a point there. "I called an old friend to ask him to look for Kate."

"Yeah. An hour later the number went to a dumpster in Queen's. How're you keeping in touch now? because I've been watching our call registers."

Neal gives him a look halfway between incredulity and disappointment. But he says, "Check your pocket."

"I know you took my wallet," Peter says impatiently.

"Did you know I put it back?"

Startled, he takes his hand from Neal's thigh to check: sure enough, the wallet's back in his pocket and intact: even the bill he gave the cabbie as deposit is folded back inside. The familiar smile tugs at his lips and he asks, "How'd you do that?"

"Same principle as picking it," he says smugly. "So if someone wants to give me some information..."

"They can just slip it to you in passing on the street," Peter finishes, thinking: for all his effort to make sure Kate doesn't come and turn Neal's life upside down again, all she needs to do is bribe someone ten dollars to come and reverse-pick his pocket some morning as Peter's bringing him in to work.

Neal gives a confirming shrug and more soberly says, "Master, she's not going to show if you're there."

"We'll see about that," Peter tells him.

But for a while there it looks as though Neal's right. Noon comes and goes and there's no sign of Kate. Peter's starting to suspect Neal's got them waiting in the wrong area on purpose — and then a payphone rings.

Neal pivots and leaps in its direction; Peter grabs his arm and yanks him back. "No."

"Peter—"

"If Kate's got business with my slave, she can talk to me." But before he can reach the phone, another man has picked it up. "Hey," Peter says, "that's for me."

The short man, back to him, waves him off in annoyance.

"Hey," he repeats more loudly.

"Excuse me," the man retorts without turning, "I'm trying to have a private conversation here."

Neal murmurs, "Peter, let's just go."

Peter looks at him suspiciously. Not at the plea to leave: that hasn't changed since Peter caught him in the taxi. But suddenly he's very _calm_ about it. Like it doesn't actually matter anymore. "Empty your pockets," Peter essays.

That's it: Neal's eyes get that trapped look in them again. "Come on, Peter, you've been right here—"

He pats him down himself and finds the letter. He reads, while Neal looks helplessly on:

> Dear Neal,  
> Heard you're looking for me. Wish I could explain more  
> but time is not on our side. Know that you're my  
> friend, my only lover. You consume my thoughts. Every day  
> I miss you more, but you need to stop looking.  
> No one can deny what we have, but it's over. Please move on.  
> Kate

He's a little impressed. Maybe Kate's actually doing the right thing here. He looks speculatively at Neal's anxious expression, then hands him the letter back. "You can read it."

"Really?"

"Don't thank me yet."

Neal doesn't listen to the warning. He reads the letter; shakes his head and reads it again; then abruptly balls it up and strides off to dump it in a trash can. "Let's just go," he repeats when Peter catches up with him.

"Neal..."

"You were right," he interrupts, too agitated to meet Peter's eye. "You were right, she— Please, can we just go?"

Peter lets him get them a cab. Neal mightn't know it now, but it's for the best. Kate's the whole reason Neal got himself enslaved; for all Peter knows she's the whole reason he got into crime in the first place. The further she is out of his life the better — but still, he can't help but feel bad for the kid. He puts a comforting hand on Neal's thigh and awkwardly pats it.

(And thinks: Now that Neal knows Kate isn't interested in him anymore, maybe Peter and El can finally—)

Abruptly Neal leans on his shoulder, head burrowing in to Peter's neck. His hair is as soft as El's, his breath at Peter's throat as warm — but it catches, and his back heaves, as if he's just run a four-minute mile. There's no room for anything but sympathy to fill Peter's chest.

And his arm risks going numb, pinned between them like this: he eases it out behind Neal's back and gently rubs his head instead. There'll be time for more later.


	8. Out and About

Even if Peter credits the Dear John letter from Kate, El suspects that really it's the freedom to walk Satchmo on his own that's settled Neal so he no longer paces and mutters in his room. He looks forward to it almost as much as Satchmo does, and comes back smiling and with a bounce in his step as he moves about his chores. Peter's still nervous about it and keeps an eye on his tracking app; El generally doesn't bother.

But she does notice the evening he's late to return. She checks the app: he's in the park. Probably he's just enjoying the fresh air. Except he should be preparing for his undercover assignment tomorrow.

She grabs her coat and goes to find him.

She spots Satchmo a moment before she recognises Neal. He's sitting — _sitting_ — on a park bench with a stranger: a short man with thick-rimmed glasses, well-bundled up in a coat and hat. As El turns her stride towards them, the stranger starts pulling an envelope from a pocket — then spots her in turn. The envelope disappears, and a game of chess spills off the bench as he jumps up and darts into the nearby bushes.

"Hey!" she shouts after him, and starts to chase him.

"Mistress, it's okay! We were just talking!"

She's lost the stranger anyway: heels and muddy grass were never going to let her make up his headstart. She turns back to snatch Satchmo's lead from Neal and demands, "Who was that?"

"Elizabeth, I know I'm not supposed to talk to strangers," he starts placatingly, "but he had a pai gow set. He said he'd teach me."

What she took for chess pieces from a distance are dominoes. Neal looks at them too, scattered in the mud, and gets a spare plastic bag from his pocket to start scooping them up.

"He was giving you an envelope," she remembers.

"Apparently he's got proof the moon landings were faked," Neal says, and admits, "He was a little weird. But he wasn't going to steal me, Elizabeth. Ask Satchmo."

Satchmo pants and thumps his tail happily.

She exhales, because Satchmo might sometimes be a bit too friendly, but at least Neal's not in danger _now_. "Neal, you've got to be careful."

"I know," he says with soulful eyes. "I'm sorry I worried you, Elizabeth. I just really don't want to mess up Peter's case."

She makes a sympathetic moue and rubs his back. "Come on," she says, "let's get back home and figure out this game together."

*

Two days later she's meeting both her boys for lunch, feeling the most relief she's felt since Peter returned from his first dangerous case after their marriage. "Neal," she says warmly and, screw the public, gives him an even warmer kiss. "What happened?"

"Well," he says, eyes dancing, " _someone_ forgot to tell NYPD we had an undercover op there—"

"Hey hey hey," Peter interrupts, "we told them; they screwed up. And _someone_ decided he'd rather run away from the men with big guns than surrender to them."

"I was trying to save my cover," Neal justifies himself.

"Oh, really. Not make with a pretty lady?"

"What lady?" El demands.

"She works for Lao," Neal says placatingly. "He wanted her to keep an eye on me until we could arrange another meeting. Honestly, nothing happened."

Peter scoffs, but she makes herself relax. "Honey, it sounds like he didn't have a choice."

"Oh, now you're taking his side," he grumbles, only half-jokingly.

She smiles and kisses him too. "Neal, give us a minute," she says, and waits for him to wander a little ahead of them. Then quietly she asks, "What's really bugging you?"

"Everything," Peter whispers back fiercely. "His transmitter cut out while he was with this woman so we've got no idea what they said to each other, and she's not just working for Lao, she's Interpol."

"You think Neal knows?"

"He spent six hours alone with her in a room. He knows. —Are you sure that guy at the park wasn't Chinese?"

"Honey, I mightn't have got a good look at him but I know he was white."

He frowns. "A short white guy in his forties wearing a hat and thick black glasses... Wait. That's the guy who picked up the phone at Grand Central."

She feels a shiver. "You think he's working with Kate?" Peter nods. "But honey, Neal was right. I was with him every moment from when I picked him up from your office. We got his suit — and I am so glad the Bureau's paying for that."

"Nick Halden has expensive tastes," Peter agrees ruefully.

"Then we came straight back home, he hung it up in his room, and a few minutes later he came down to walk Satchmo. You already checked our call registers so we know he didn't make any phone calls. Even if that man was..." She shakes her head, uncomfortable even at the hypothetical thought. "Watching for Neal to come out, how could he have known to bring a pai gow set?"

Peter exhales heavily. Then something visibly hits him: "Someone in the Bureau could have known."

It takes her a moment to catch his meaning. She glances ahead at Neal and lowers her voice a little more, just to be safe. "The FBI agent in the photo with Kate? But what would _he_ want with Neal?"

"All the art and money he stole."

She starts to raise her eyebrows at his instant certainty, then thinks about it. "That is an awful lot of motive," she concedes. "But where does Interpol fit into all this?"

"That's what I plan to find out."

*

Being Peter, he does. El stands beside him as he confronts Neal in their lounge that evening. "What does Interpol want? Did Meilin ask you about your stolen property?"

"What?" Neal says from his knees on the rug Peter's left him on. At first he was indignant at being treated like a slave in their own home, but now he looks only startled. "No! They want Lao to walk. They're after his boss."

"Lao doesn't have a boss," he retorts. "You know what this is really about? It's about jurisdiction. If they arrest him on Asian soil they get to tell Amnesty International they've rescued another person from American slavery, and meanwhile the man who killed an FBI agent gets a cushy private cell and parole in ten." Neal looks chastened, but it doesn't abate Peter's anger. "And what do you get, Neal?"

He looks helplessly at El, who feels the answer crystallise right out of Peter's words. "Did she promise you your freedom?"

"What was I supposed to do?" he asks. "She said she could get me out of the country."

"Neal," she says in horror, "they don't have slavery but they've still got extradition treaties. You'd be on the run for the rest of your life. Is that what you want?"

He shakes his head unhappily. "No."

"Good," Peter snaps, "because the only place you're going is the Processing Centre." El has qualms about the threat. They've always told Neal that they'll always be here to look after him: they'll never hurt him and never abandon him. But right now they have to protect him from himself. So she sets her jaw and gives a nod to amplify it when Peter says, "We either take down Lao now, or you are out of this family."

Neal looks up at him, his face a study of mixed emotions. "We're a family?"

Peter doesn't budge. "You tell me."


	9. Fall Guy

Peter arrives home, tired and heartsick. He's also late for dinner, which adds guilt to the load, because El's feeling at least as hurt as he is by Neal's latest betrayal. Just when they thought the kid was getting his head screwed on right he goes and pulls a heist over a pink diamond. With OPR breathing down his neck, what choice did Peter have but to let them take him back to the Processing Centre?

So the last thing he's expecting when he walks in the door tonight is to see Neal there in the lounge, on his knees by the bookcase.

"Oh my God," he says in despair.

El joins him and rubs his arm sympathetically.

"We have an escapee from the Recidivist Processing Centre in our house!"

She tips her head like there's some leeway in the facts here. "Technically I think he's... running an errand."

"He— What?" Peter looks down at him, kneeling there as quietly as any slave, hands tidily on his thighs and eyes cast patiently to the floor. He doesn't for a second believe a new owner's trained that into him so quickly. Okay, so plenty of people might have bought him — for his stash or for his skills — but what kind of greedy-and-probably-criminal new owner would send him straight to an FBI agent's house? "Who bought him?"

She opens her mouth; takes on a thoughtful expression; and says, "Neal, I think you'd better explain it."

"Yes, Mistress," he agrees. She grimaces at the title but doesn't complain. "The man who picked me up from the Centre was hired by the anonymous executor of a blind trust funded by a bank account—"

"Neal, I swear to God—"

"—That you're eventually going to trace back to Nicholas Halden," he summarises meekly.

He puts his hand to his forehead. "You _bought yourself_ ," he says, "with— That money's subject to forfeiture. You can't—" He turns to El and shakes his head. "I stand by my original statement."

"Give him a minute to explain," she says, and lifts herself on tiptoe for a quick kiss that leaves him no choice as she heads in the direction of the kitchen.

He hopes when she's poured herself a glass of wine she brings him back a beer too. Or three. Grumpily he tells Neal, "One minute. You explain what you were thinking when you turned my wife into an accomplice."

"Yes, Master," Neal agrees promptly. "—Does that minute start now?"

"Go," he snaps.

"I was set up."

Every criminal was set up, but for El's sake he plays along. "By who?"

"Agent Fowler."

"Fowler," he scoffs. "Fowler tampered with your collar and put your initials on the diamond?"

"Yes, Master. I heard him tell—"

"And did Fowler file that slit at the top of the door for that cord you used to pull back the bolt?"

"I never actually got that working—"

"What about that phone under your mattress?" Finding that explained all the muttering Neal used to do up there in his room, and how he arranged to meet his friend in the park for pai gow. "And more than three hundred dollars in cash, not to mention a fraudulently obtained credit card and fake ID? Were those all Fowler too?"

Neal takes a breath and admits, "No, Master. But I didn't bug your phone."

"What?" He looks where a half-turn of Neal's head indicates, at the dining table. The phone's been disassembled and a bug sits beside it, alongside a page of Neal's scrawl instructing El on how to find and disable it.

"I stayed back here the whole time," Neal assures him.

"My God, they've been inside the house." He thinks it through, step by horrific step. "They couldn't have had authorization. Not within the window of the crime and his suspicion of you."

"Exactly. Agent Fowler is dirty. Master, I heard him talking to one of his agents. He saw the request you had Jones put through to look at my initials on the bond forgery."

"He checked it too."

"And then my initials just happened to show up on the pink diamond. He's using you to get me." He looks up at Peter without lifting his head any more than he has to. It gives him a timorous look that some people would pay top dollar for, and it's a little disconcerting. Peter's always preferred his natural self-assurance. Bounded by limits, of course — but pushing them, just a little. "My minute's up, Master," he says.

*

"So Kate's working with Fowler," El muses over her wine later.

Peter's drinking a beer, and Neal's in his room following an unprotested stripsearch and confiscation of another two disposable phones. If Fowler tries any more insinuations, Peter will say they're detaining him while they determine who his legal owner is.

"They want Neal's stash," he says now. "She thought when he escaped she could follow him right to it, but then I caught him. Then she tried passing notes and setting up secret meetings, but I put a stop to that too. So they frame him, get him sent back to the Centre, and figure when his training's done they'll buy him like any ordinary couple. Make him tell them where the stash is and then—" He waves his free hand. Sell him, dump him on the street, use him to commit even more crimes: it doesn't matter. He's not letting them get away with it.

"Poor boy," El empathises. Then, thoughtfully, she adds, "You know, it's actually a good thing that Neal got in first."

Peter snorts, but he can't argue.

"What are you going to do?"

"First thing tomorrow I'll take him back to our jewelery store, tell them he's in my custody and he's going to show me how he got into the vault, and prove who really pulled this all off."

"Then he can come back home," she says, satisfied.

He's less enthusiastic. Neal mightn't have stolen the pink diamond, but he did amass a pretty decent go-bag in his room. But Peter has no choice. "I'm not letting them get to him now."

She smiles and takes his hand over the table. "Honey, he came to us."

"Yeah," Peter says without cheering up. That's what's bugging him. "Why would he do that?"

She tilts her head fondly and suggests, "Maybe a few days back at the Centre are just what he needed to appreciate what he has here."

Maybe, Peter thinks. But maybe when they put their collar back on him they should get him a microchip too. Just in case.


	10. Sold Out

It's one of El's work-from-home days. Usually Neal would stay with her — or rather, usually she'd arrange to work from home on a day he can't go with Peter on some operation, because it was always awkward taking him to work knowing Yvonne disapproved, and since Yvonne moved to another job El's had twice the paperwork anyway.

But for the last week and a half Neal's been on his own undercover operation, as part of a rent-a-slave crowd hired by the boiler room Peter's going after. She'd worry, letting him wear a company's collar, but his new microchip gives them some peace of mind. Peter's even managing to bring him home evenings. It's just odd and quiet working at the dining table without him there to bring her tea when she's flagging, chat when she needs a break, and take Satchmo into the yard when she can't deal with interruptions.

Or answer the door.

It's a short man wearing an unfortunate toupee. He looks taken aback to see her, but rallies into a impassioned spiel about a Rosicrucian conspiracy. If Neal was here she'd call him over to deal with it. In his absence she's almost got the door shut when she belatedly recognises the round rosy-cheeked face. She tips her head to one side and says, "You must want your pai gow set back."

He stops mid-rant with a trapped-bunny look in his eyes.

"Come in," she invites him. "I'll just go and find it." She's not sure it's going to work, but she doesn't have any way to keep him here otherwise. She switches the kettle on and tries to remember where Neal put the dominoes. It's strange to realise how unfamiliar she's become with the contents of her own cupboards and drawers these last months.

"Are we alone?" Neal's friend calls warily.

A vestige of caution prompts her to say, "Well, I've got a guard dog and the FBI on speed-dial." She tries another drawer and finds a ziplock bag behind two screwdrivers, three lightbulbs and a dead remote control. "There it is," she says in satisfaction.

The man is barely inside when she brings it back to him, wiping his shoes on the doormat and looking around suspiciously. He accepts the bag and tucks it inside his jacket. "I'll count them later," he informs her.

"Okay," she agrees. Neal was telling the truth about one thing when he'd said his friend was a little weird, but it's actually kind of endearing. "Is it true you have proof the moon landings are a hoax?"

His eyes light up. "Do I!" He heads for her sofa, pulling an envelope out of the other side of his jacket.

El shuts the door and joins him over the coffee table, and he launches into his tale. The photos are dubious, his paranoia wild, but he's a natural raconteur. Even she's startled when the kettle whistles. "Oh — I was just making tea. Would you like some?"

"Herbal?" he asks.

"Jasmine, chamomile, or rooibos."

"Hm. Country of origin?"

"Ah... I'm pretty sure the jasmine's from Vietnam."

"Acceptable," he judges.

She keeps a fixed smile and goes to get the cups and teabags. Vietnam mightn't have slave labour, but it's hardly free from human rights abuses. Besides, who does he think unloads the crates at the docks, trucks them across the country, and loads them onto the shelves at Walmart? It's just not possible in this world to avoid some kind of... moral contamination. All you can do is try and be a good person yourself: treat people well, like she and Peter do with Neal.

She settles herself and returns with the tea. "You know, we never introduced ourselves. I'm Elizabeth."

"I know," he says serenely and inhales the scent of his tea as it steeps.

"Do you have a name?" she prompts.

"I have many."

She thinks about that for a moment, then decides to put it aside for the real topic. "Peter and I really care about Neal."

He points out, "If you love something, set it free."

"Well, we can't do that."

"'Determine that the thing can and shall be done, and then we shall find the way.' Abraham Lincoln."

She blinks: who goes around quoting Lincoln, of all the presidents? "But Lincoln's way didn't work. It wasn't until Tilden's reforms— Wait. Is this what you've been talking to Neal about?"

"Oh, look at the time," he says, setting his tea down with a small splash and sweeping up his photos.

"Look, Mr... whoever you are. We want Neal to be happy, and when he's settled down a bit more I'm sure we can let him have visitors." He pauses in his rush to leave, but only long enough to take a handkerchief from his pocket and wipe his teacup of fingerprints. "But he is a recidivist and he's our responsibility and— You know, people have tried just setting slaves free, and they just end up committing more crimes and getting arrested again and made someone else's slave. Neal deserves better than that."

Her last words are to a closed door. She huffs out a frustrated breath, suddenly not in the mood for her jasmine tea. She leaves it for Neal to clean up later and goes to finish reconciling her accounts.

*

The next night she's barely home before her boys. She's greeting Satchmo when Peter and Neal come in the door; she smiles at them and finishes unbuttoning her coat. "Any trouble getting away from the rental company?" she asks, just as she's been asking every night since this operation started.

"No trouble," Neal says with his same bright smile, but tonight he doesn't move to help her out of her coat, and he continues, "They just think someone's screwing me."

She blinks at the language from his mouth, and blinks again when Peter snaps, "Neal, what is wrong with you?"

"Why would there be anything wrong with me, Master? I'm just a happy little slave."

His brief stint back at the Centre trained 'Master' and 'Mistress' into him so thoroughly that it took a week and a series of increasingly blunt orders to make him revert back to 'Peter' and 'Elizabeth'. This is less forgetfulness and more defiance, but the cure is the same either way. "On the mat," Elizabeth tells him.

"Yes, Mistress," he says, undaunted as he kneels on the welcome mat.

She takes Peter and Satchmo into the kitchen and whispers, "What happened?"

"He's been like this all day!" Peter whispers back defensively.

"Well, nothing happened this morning," she points out. But, thinking back to breakfast, there was something off even then. She just assumed he was feeling groggy after last night's headache.... She frowns. "Do you think he's upset about missing his friend's visit?"

Revelation hardens Peter's face. "I don't think he missed a thing," he says, and stalks back to the entrance. "Where is it, Neal? What did he leave for you?"

Ingenuously Neal asks the floor, "How could he leave anything, Master? You already checked the sofa last night before I cleared away the tea."

He narrows his eyes at the mat Neal's kneeling on. "Get off there."

Neal reasons, "But Mistress said—"

"Move!"

He shifts onto the hardwood, and watches Peter retrieve the envelope from under the mat. El comes to his shoulder as Peter pulls out its contents: a farewell letter that looks like it's been retrieved from a trashbin; a tattered and torn wine label showing a scorched map; and the photo of Kate at the ATM with Fowler's ringed hand on her shoulder.

"I've seen that ring," Neal accuses him. "You're wearing it in that photo on the stairs. You took Kate."

"Neal, are you out of your mind?" El exclaims as Peter shakes his head in exasperation and strides upstairs to where he keeps the ring.

But at least with the problem out in the open they can address it. Neal's distrusting at first, but when he sees that Peter's ring is a common FBI ten-year pin he relaxes: all the strain of suspecting them removed.

*

The rest of the week passes as happily as ever, and on Friday El gets back home from a function to find them sitting on the sofa together with a beer and a juice. "Looks like my boys solved themselves a case," she says, waving Neal to stay put, and hangs up her own coat.

"We did," Neal says gaily, and when she joins them he tilts his head up into her kiss. He still shies away from heavier petting, but his kisses are always captivating.

Peter accepts his own kiss and adds, "One mystery down, two to go."

"Oh?" She kicks off her heels and sits in the space between them that Neal makes for her.

"When we came to round up the slaves and take them back to the rental company, half of them had already been transported somewhere. Jones thinks Avery sold them off on the black market to make some extra cash before he split town. Of course Avery denies it, says they must have escaped in the confusion."

"Well, that's hardly likely, with the FBI right there."

"Yeah. It's just it was damn good timing if Avery did it. I'd almost suspect he was right and someone helped them—"

Neal puts in lightly, "Except I was busy suffocating at the time."

"Suffocating?" El repeats sharply.

Peter puts his hands up protectively. "It was just for a minute. ...Or so. And then Jones arrived and we arrested everyone."

She frowns and looks at Neal, but he's smiling as if it's just another day at the office. When she puts a hand on his thigh he covers it comfortingly with his own and tells her, "And then Peter told me about how Fowler's behind all this and how Kate needs the music box."

"He did, did he?" Neal seems to be taking it well. Perhaps Peter didn't mention, or Neal doesn't want to believe, that Kate's in it with Fowler to the hilt. "So do you know where this music box is?"

He looks away at that, then back with an entreating smile and a squeeze of her hand. "I'm going to need some help."

"Of course," she says, but his smile only turns more entreating, and she realises: "You mean from your friend."

He admits circumspectly, "He knows people who... know people..."

It is really hard to say no to those eyes. "Neal, he wants to help you escape."

"So give me the chance to tell him I don't want to." Really hard. "Elizabeth, I just want to make sure Kate's safe." She hesitates, unsure, and he lifts her hand to his lips. Just the faintest nip of a kiss, but so charged, and his eyes so intent on hers, that she could straddle him here and now. His thumb runs over her fingers to the tips, and he stands with another, softer kiss to her knuckle. "I'm going to fix dinner. Just think about it?"

She watches him go, and turns helplessly to Peter.

"I don't trust the little guy," he says. Then grimly admits, "But I really want to get Kate out of Neal's life, and if the music box will do that..."

"Yeah." She pats his shoulder, thinking about it. "I just don't want to make any decisions while I'm feeling this horny."

"Oh," Peter says, and completely fails to suppress a smirk. "Well, I— I can help with that." And, his complete inability to flirt aside, he proceeds to do just that.


	11. Inducement

They're all bedding down for the night on the floor of the lounge. It's been a long day since Peter discovered the latest bug Fowler's planted, and will be another long day tomorrow until Neal's friend 'Mozzie' pronounces their upstairs clear of bugs. And Peter suspects, easing himself down onto the hardwood, that they're not going to get the most comfortable sleep either. But El grins at him in a reminder that at least they can make it fun.

"Hey," he says to Neal over on the edge of the room, "come and join us."

"Oh, I'm good," Neal says in pleasant dismissal.

"No, really, come on over."

"You're doing the teenager thing, I don't want to get in your way."

"You won't," El says, hooking a hand over Peter's shoulder.

Neal quits fussing with the camping mat under his comforter. Almost to himself he says, "Okay, I guess I should just..." He comes over, but only to kneel casually at the foot of Peter's comforter and look at them with a sober expression Peter doesn't trust. "Guys, listen, I like you a lot, and I really appreciate you making me a part of your family here. It's just that's how I like to think of you: like you're my parents. No offense," he adds with a winning smile at El.

"None taken," she says in bemusement. "That's really sweet, Neal, but you're not our son. You're, well..."

"Our slave," Peter finishes bluntly, thinking: this is their life? getting the _I just don't think of you that way_ speech from their slave?

"I know that," Neal says, "I just like what we have, and—"

He cuts off the platitudes with a suspicious, "Is this about Kate?"

"No, Peter, I promise it's got nothing to do with Kate."

"Then what?" El asks.

"I just don't want to have sex with people who own me."

Peter retorts, "You're not having sex with anyone else."

He opens his mouth, shuts it, and says only, "Okay, Peter."

As Peter stares in disbelief, El tries scooting forward, hand out to him. When he shifts away her face only softens. "Oh, honey. You know we're not going to hurt you."

"I know that," he repeats plaintively.

"And you know this isn't actually up for negotiation," Peter adds. El gives him a look, but dancing around the issue isn't going to help any more now than it has for the last half a year.

"I'm not negotiating, Peter. I'll stay inside and do the chores, I'll go to work and get shot at—"

"What?" El says in alarm.

"He's exaggerating," Peter puts in quickly, because he'll be damned if he's going to be blamed for Neal's inveterate recklessness. "Neal, don't try to change the subject. Really, honey, he's exaggerating." Her look says she's only tabling this discussion.

To Neal's credit he tries to pour oil on the water with a placating, "All I'm saying is I'll do anything you want. I just won't have sex with you."

Stung, Peter bites back, "Oh, you'll just kiss us and cry on our shoulder when _you_ want something."

Hands raised in counterfeit surrender, he backs up onto his feet. "Okay, so I'm just going to go to bed over there, and—"

"No. You—"

"You want to come over and rape me—"

"Neal!" El says.

"I'm just warning you I'll be kicking and screaming, so I— I don't know if you like that kind of thing, but—"

Peter would have more than a few words to say if the doorbell didn't ring just then.

And he'd still come back to it as soon as humanly possible if their late-night visitor wasn't Hughes warning him that Fowler has tape of him apparently accepting a bribe from a federal judge.

*

He spends all night in the Bureau with his agents trying to pull the case together, only to be shut down on the verge of success by Fowler sealing all the files. He gets a lead from the detective who first took the case, but it's too slender to do anything with before he's called into Hughes' office.

And Fowler presents a...

...Completely blank tape.

Fowler's dismay is a joy to see. Peter would be just as bewildered, except... Well, he lives with a con artist and a determined woman.

*

When he comes home for lunch he finds El and Neal at the table eating takeaway pizza.

Peter looks at the pizza box (there's no way that shop delivers to Brooklyn), looks at the collar sitting on the kitchen bench (El's expression turns shifty), and looks at Neal's cheese-greased smirk. He has no idea what Neal did to get to that tape. All his ideas are circling around what he wants Neal to do with those shiny lips.

Neal offers him the pizza box as he gets close, like some kind of shield. "I got anchovies," he says.

"Oh, I'm good."

"Peter, it'll get cold."

He takes the box only to put it out of the way. El sets her own half-eaten slice on her plate to watch.

Neal's cheeky smile doesn't falter a bit as Peter cups chin and jaw in his hand, though his pulse quickens and his pupils dilate. Don't _anyone_ tell them Neal doesn't want this just as much as they do. But instead of responding to Peter he only says, "And you're going to need your strength if we're going to take down Judge Clark." 

And, goddammit, he knows just how to distract him. Peter doesn't let go, but he can't resist saying, "You've got a plan."

Neal tips his head consideringly, half into Peter's hand and half out of it.

"Talk," Peter growls.

"I'm going to need my collar for this," he decides, like it's a goddamn prop, and is halfway across the room before Peter even realises he's out of his seat.

He looks an appeal at El, who shrugs philosophically, and he gives up. He's not convinced either the pizza or taking down Judge Clark will be better than sex, but put together they might be better than arguing over a lunch-hour quickie. And once they've arrested Clark — then they can pick this up again right where they've left off.


	12. Cracked Wide Open

Dr Westlake is wonderful. El pours her heart out to him while Peter sits beside her; a nurse is watching Neal in another room. "He says he loves us and really he's the sweetest, most affectionate boy you could imagine. But he just... well, he _refuses_ to have sex with us, and we're worried."

Peter, a little suspicious of the whole proceedings, says bluntly, "We're not using any violence. We wouldn't beat our dog and we won't beat Neal. So if your so-called therapy—"

El puts in quickly, "Most of the places we looked at talk about training and aversion therapy, but your website mentioned alternative methods."

"That's right," Dr Westlake says, "and I completely agree with you both. Recidivists may have forfeited the rights of a legal person, but they're still psychologically as complex as any other human being. Maybe even more so. There's simply no point punishing Neal's resistance unless we first probe past to what's behind it."

"Well, of course we've tried asking," she says.

Peter grumbles, "He keeps saying he just doesn't want to."

El nods. "He did say once it's because we could hurt him — but then in the same breath he said he knows we won't."

"Conflicted statements like that aren't uncommon with recidivists," Dr Westlake says reassuringly. "They're often in the habit of keeping things to themselves." Here Peter snorts not-so-softly, and El has to admit the description fits Neal to a T. "Not just details of their crimes, but personal information... emotions. And just like it is for us, sometimes it's easier to work things through with an impartial stranger rather than with a master and mistress they care about. So my approach will be focused on putting Neal into a headspace where it's easy to open up. I'll introduce him to some tools we can use, and then I'll work steadily through whatever's causing all this resistance. Obviously I can't make any promises, but in cases like this where the slave obviously cares for his owners, usually one session is all you need to see results."

It sounds good. And whatever Peter's reservations about resorting to a psychiatrist in general or the fees charged by the Howser Clinic in particular, he doesn't raise any objections now. El nods decisively: "So how exactly does this work?"

*

Neal's face goes warily still when El tells him about the sedative. He looks like he'd object if they were in private.

"It's just to relax you so you can open up more easily," she says, rubbing his shoulder. She baulked herself when Dr Westlake first mentioned this part, but it makes sense. "Like drinking a glass or two of wine."

"Slaves aren't allowed intoxicating substances, Mistress," he reminds her.

Dr Westlake gives him a tolerant smile. "That's true, Neal, but I can prescribe drugs for therapeutic purposes."

"Yes, sir," he agrees politely.

"Now, Neal, your master and mistress say they like you calling them by their first names, so how about you call me Michael too."

He glances at them for permission.

"Do what the doctor tells you," Peter scolds gently.

"Okay," he agrees, "Michael it is." He flashes a brassy grin, which wavers a little as the nurse approaches with the needle. At Dr Westlake's prompting he perches onto the waiting sofa and they all watch her inject it. Neal lets out a carefully steady breath as he rests his head against the sofa back. "Will you stay with me?" he asks.

"No," El says, giving his shoulder another rub. "This session's completely confidential, so you can say anything you need to. Doctor— Michael won't tell us anything that goes on in this room, and we won't ask you anything either. In fact, even if we do ask, you're not allowed to tell us anything, okay? So you can just be completely open with Michael."

"That's an order, Neal," Peter adds. Neal's looking a little distracted: the drugs must already be kicking in. "Don't tell us anything about this session, under any circumstances. Got it?"

"Yeah, Peter," he says lazily. "Don't ask, don't tell."

"I think we're ready to begin now," Dr Westlake tells them. El hesitates with sudden nerves and he smiles reassuringly. "Don't worry: he's in good hands."

*

When they come back for him, Neal's as loose-limbed as if they did feed him a bottle or so of wine. A wheelchair gets him to the car, where he vacillates between his first sheer joy at seeing them and a deep pensive silence. Three times he tries to impart some urgent confidence from his therapy. A word stops him each time, until his eyes close and his head falls against the window.

Then he lurches upright again. "Peter!"

Peter startles at the wheel, and swears, but the car can just about drive itself. "What?"

"They're taking their kidneys, Peter. You have to do something."

"Neal, what are you talking about?" he asks with a bemusement to match El's own.

"There's a doctor," he says, draping himself over the seat in front of him in full-blown drunken earnestness. "Foul... bowel... Powell. Doctor Powell. He buys slaves and takes their kidneys and sells them again."

"Oh," Peter says. "Is that all?"

He's not very good at thinking about things from Neal's point of view. Especially a drugged-out Neal. "Honey, it does sound kind of scary."

"They've got medical standards."

"Even so..."

"They've got to get organs somehow. Imagine the waiting list if they had to rely on donations."

"I suppose," she concedes. It just feels like one thing paying someone who cares about their slave's wellbeing, and another buying slaves for the sole purpose of harvesting their organs before selling them on. "Neal, you know we wouldn't ever let that happen to you, don't you?"

"Yeah," he says. "I wish," he starts then, before trailing off.

"What do you wish, honey?"

He looks at her with eyes so soulful her heart could just about break. Then he puts a hand flat on her chest and leans, as if he's trying to hold her heart together there for her. "I wish you really loved me," he says, "the way I love you."

"Oh, honey." Is that what this has all been about? "We love you every bit as much as you love us, I promise."

He presses her chest as if he wants to say something else, but then he just slumps against her shoulder.

"Hey there," Peter teases from the front, "no getting started without me."

She laughs helplessly. "Honey, he's completely stoned. We'll have much more fun once he's sobered up, won't we, Neal?"

"Lots of fun," he agrees with a heavy sigh, and goes to sleep on her shoulder.

*

They do. And he's perfect: sweet with her and playful with Peter. Afterwards he always goes for a quick shower, but then he comes back to kiss them goodnight. When they ask he stays in their bed. They don't always ask, because really it's not big enough for three, but that's not what seems to make him pensive sometimes. El just makes sure to remind him how much they love him, and he smiles again, and everything's perfect.


	13. Jade

El's at her sister's while they get their house rewired, and Peter's in a grungy motel without even a TV, fucking Neal.

Or he's trying to: Neal's just lying there, looking at the grungy ceiling and making him do all the work. At this rate he'd be better off going back to the Bureau and looking through photobooks to find the woman they let walk away from murdering Aldys Grey yesterday afternoon. A thought which doesn't help his mood at all. "Give me something to work with here, Neal. At least _touch_ me."

Neal lifts his hands to Peter's sides obediently — absently — and mechanically rubs his back in a move that more frustrates than anything.

"Neal, stop it," and he lays his hands back down on the bed, loose and empty. He's doing this on purpose, God only knows why, and Peter's irritation isn't helping matters at all. "Dammit, Neal, you know what I want. You _know_ how to make this good, so _do it_."

Neal looks at the ceiling and then, for the first time since the missing TV rewrote their evening agenda, looks at Peter. "Cuff my hands behind my back."

Peter blinks. It's not exactly flirtatious, but eye contact is a start. He finally feels himself responding, and risks pulling back: finally something worth waiting for. "Really?" he says speculatively.

"Yeah. Get your cuffs, put my hands behind my back, and put them on me."

Something catches in Peter's throat, despite the fact that it's phrased more as a series of commands than a suggestion. He stumbles off the bed while Neal sits up, and grabs the cuffs from his bag.

Neal begins to smile when he turns back with them, his secret smile like _Yes, this is going to be good._ It already is good. Who would have thought that cuffs were all it would take?

He kneels astride Neal's outstretched legs — Neal's smile widens — and reaches the cuffs around. Neal scoots back, a twinkle in his eye. "Oh no, you don't," Peter says, grabbing for his wrists. Neal tries a few more lighthearted evasions, but Peter catches him easily and the cuffs are on behind him.

Neal scoots back again, downright smirking now, right back to the headboard.

"You like that," Peter says happily. _He_ certainly does. He leans in after his boy, in to kiss that smirk off his lips and feel his mouth open to him. "You like having my cuffs on your wrists."

"No," Neal says, tilting his head back to expose his throat.

"Admit it," Peter says, and licks a long stripe up over his adam's apple.

"No." Peter nips warningly at the soft skin there, and he gasps. "I like," he says, and Peter hums in anticipation: "I like getting out of them."

Peter's cock twitches. He pulls back again to look. "You didn't."

Neal smiles at him serenely, hands still behind his back. When Peter tries to look behind him, he twists to block his view.

He hasn't, Peter decides, and leans in again, reaching his own hands around either side of Neal to prove it by touch.

And hears, as much as feels, the cuffs close around his own wrists.

"Wh—"

Neal's kiss stops the question. It's a passionate kiss, so forceful it'd drive Peter's head back if there weren't a hand in his hair pulling him into it. Another hand runs possessively over his chest. In surprise he pulls at the cuffs, and they dig into his flesh as the bar of the headboard stops them.

His cock _jumps_.

A thumb and finger rub his nipple between them. " _You_ like being handcuffed," Neal's voice says while he struggles to catch his breath. Teeth graze Peter's collarbone.

"No," he gasps. His eyes are closed. He wrestles them open, and feels them widen at the sight of his cuffed hands, the short chain and the headboard, the neat trap. Neal's knee rubs intently inside his thigh. "That's not—"

Another kiss, and his heart is thumping like he just ran twenty laps. He hears the lube being opened — realises his eyes have closed again — but his vision is swimming and the shock of cool dampness on his sensitive nipple squeezes his eyelids once more shut.

"You've never liked catching me," Neal says, trailing shivers over his skin, "anywhere near as much as you've liked chasing me. Having to chase me." A finger reaches, and skirts, his groin. "Because I escaped you again," a kiss, "and again," a nip of his jawline, "and again."

The finger dips down and around and behind his balls. Neal's all wrong but Peter's cock is hard and he can't stop shaking his head and it's not worth the argument. He rasps out, "Get yourself ready."

Neal laughs, catching his head still with his dry hand and looking him straight in the eyes. "Say 'please'."

"P—? What?"

With another laugh Neal ducks out from under his arm. "Say... 'Please, Master'."

His cock is _hard_ and that's— No, he tells himself: Neal's _wrong_. "Get back here."

Neal runs the finger that's just been pressed against his taint down the side of his face, and he swallows. "Say 'please, Master'," he repeats.

"I'm not saying— that," he growls.

Neal backs off the bed and snags his t-shirt and sweater off the floor.

Peter narrows his eyes. "What are you doing?"

"Getting dressed," he says serenely, pulling them over his head.

"No. Get back here."

"Mm, I don't think so," he teases, though his own cock is standing at attention and he forgets his boxers when he steps into his jeans. "If you're not going to cooperate then I guess we're done here." He zips up, carefully; his crotch bulges and his eyes dance all the more at Peter's expression.

"We are _not_ done, Neal. Neal!"

Neal saunters around the foot of the bed, smirking like the cat who got the canary. "Two words, Peter. Is that so much to ask?"

Peter has to crane his neck to track his movements, over one shoulder and then over the other. "Four words," he retorts as Neal reaches his other side. " _You_ are _my_ slave."

"Mm," he agrees, and leans in. Peter braces for another kiss and instead feels the whisper of air against his cheek: "But don't you wish it was the other way around?"

"N—" And there's the kiss, stopping him again as efficiently as a gag. Helplessly his eyes close. He doesn't, he tells himself, doesn't wish— Suddenly sees himself as he is: kneeling on his bed, cuffed to the headboard with Neal standing possessively over him and toying again with his nipples. His cock aches with readiness and when Neal's tongue pulls out of his mouth it draws a groan of a " _Please_ " with it.

"Yes," Neal hisses. His hand disappears from Peter's chest, and as Peter strains after it the lid of the lube snaps open and closed. "Keep going."

"Please..." He can't. "Neal."

"Peter, Peter, Peter." The slick noises of him getting his hands well lubed up. The tip of a finger cool and warm at the nape of Peter's neck. A second beside it. Both slipping forward, trailing cool lube, meeting again at the front of his throat. The hands close, gently but firmly encircling his neck, until he has no choice but to recognise what they represent and how he wants...

It's uncomfortable beneath them to swallow. "M— Master. Please."

And the hands _move_. One darts down over chest and nipples and down and up again, and the other trails slower but steadier down his spine and oh God—

"Neal—"

The hands come off. "What's that, Peter?"

"Master," he says quickly. "Please, Master—" And Neal unzips, clambering back on the bed — only not ducking under his arm to be in front of him, but shuffling close and hot up behind. Peter is breathing too heavily, almost, too close to care, except for a thread of uneasiness as that familiar hot cock presses between his legs in this unfamiliar way. He grabs the bars of the headboard. "Ne— Master..."

"Not this time," Neal reassures him, and makes him gasp with a hand tight around his cock and the implication: _Next time_. Neal's breathing is rough, too, as he ruts against him: "Going to make this— make this good for you, Peter. Like you wanted — didn't you?"

He grips the headboard, arms straining with his weight and the angle. "Yes. Master, yes."

"Say it," Neal says, moving a little faster in his crack, thumbing a little nearer the tip of his cock. "Tell me what you want."

"I— I—" He's nearing the point where it seems like it'll just be easier to stop breathing, or to start screaming, or—

"Beg, Peter."

"Please," he chokes out as it builds, "Master, please, fuck me, I want you to— to—"

He loses coherence there for a while: vaguely hears himself babbling slavish pleas, but mostly sees stars.

After, he floats there in an exhausted haze. His thoughts are disjointed variations on _What just—_ and _That was—_ and _Wow_. He's too stunned to have even moved: just sagged on the spot, sticky and aching and sated. Barely room to breathe with his chest almost on his knees, and barely wanting to.

Slowly he realises he's getting cold. He reaches for the bedcover — is pulled up short by the forgotten handcuffs. He winces in embarrassment. "Okay, Neal, you can unlock these now."

Silence. And even before he looks, he knows he's alone. Maybe Neal's gone to the bathroom for a cloth, he thinks, though he can see his phone with the collar right there on the motel room's thin plaid carpet.

He's gone. Neal's escaped _again_.

His cock twitches like he's sixteen, and he chokes back an incongruous sob, and with every muscle like jelly he scoots up by the headboard and sets himself to pulling the motel phone off the nightstand with his feet.

*

He finds Neal within half an hour by the simple expedient of googling the nearest concentration of high-end bars and checking them one by one. They're crowded, but Neal's microchip has a thirty-foot radius so Peter hardly needs to step in the door to rule each one out.

He finds him flirting with a pretty brunette at a table for two. Neal's holding a half-empty wineglass; she's holding an origami lily. When she sees Peter approach with the collar, she gives Neal a disbelieving look, picks up her purse, and disapears with it and the lily into the crowd.

Neal takes a last swig of his wine before Peter can snatch it from his hand and put the collar back around his neck. With a resigned smile he says, "So now you know how I got Ruiz to let me walk out the door with his pants."

It takes a moment for Peter to parse, and then hits him like a fist in the gut. Ruiz really made him— Neal was telling the truth about— And Peter believed Ruiz and punished—

 _No._ This is Neal. He was lying then and he's lying now, even if Peter can't think why— A distraction, he realises in relief: it's a con to distract Peter from the fact that Neal just humiliated him, ran away, and bought himself a wine with God only knows whose money. Because the goddamn brat just can't stop himself. "First thing tomorrow," Peter grits out, "you're going to have another session with Doctor Westlake at the Howser."

The smile drains off Neal's face. "No."

"That, right there—"

Neal drops to his knees so abruptly Peter takes a step back in case his shoes are about to get splattered with recycled wine. "Master, _please_!"

He's even more taken aback by that. But people are starting to stare. He grips Neal by the shoulder and hauls him up and outside.

"You can beat me," Neal says as they stride back to the motel.

"I'm not going to beat you," he snaps.

"I won't tell Elizabeth. You can—"

"Neal, stop it!" And Neal does, instantly, only making his face do his pleading for him. Somehow that cuts through all the jangling anger that's been keying Peter up and doing his head in, because it's not the same false submission he's so used to. "You really don't want to go back to the shrink, do you?" he asks, narrowing his eyes to gauge just how useful this new information might be.

Neal swallows, not denying it. "Peter, I thought you'd like it."

"You—"

He cuts quickly — entreatingly — into Peter's disbelief. "I thought you knew I'd come back."

It's a ridiculous story, more ridiculous than anything else he's ever told. And yet — he could have been out of the city by the time Peter had managed to dial reception. Instead he was just sitting there, drinking a glass of wine and waiting for Peter to arrive. Not that Peter's just going to take his word for it, not when Neal's tried so many times to escape over the last half year. He challenges him, "Why would you do that?"

And Neal gives him a helpless shake of his head and grimaces unhappily at the motel door they're approaching. "I don't know."


	14. Bottled Up

"Ultimately," Mozzie opines over his Vietnamese tea, "slavery cannot exist without the threat of violence."

"We've never threatened Neal with violence," El says with a fond look to where he's cleaning up after the casserole he's just put in the oven. He's been shaking his head at Mozzie, a pained expression on his face, but quickly spares her a smile.

"Ah, but the threat is there," Mozzie insists. "He knows that if he tries to escape any stranger can restrain him. If he resists they can use force. If he defends himself—"

"But wait," she protests. "If _I_ resist arrest the police can use force. This is the same argument libertarians use about taxes."

He leans forward eagerly. "Precisely!"

From the kitchen bench Neal puts in a disapproving, "Moz, there's a difference between taking someone's property and taking someone's person."

"Of course there is," he says, "but in the end aren't we all slaves to the man?"

"No, we— That's really pretty offensive, Moz."

"Neal," he says placatingly, "I'm on your side."

"My side isn't telling her slavery's no worse than taxes."

"Neal," El says, because his tone might be pleasant but it's still not exactly polite conversation.

He lifts his hands with a smile of easy surrender and sets the timer on the oven. "I'll go clean something upstairs."

"Wait," Mozzie says, "I need to test you on your openings."

El blinks. "His what?"

"Chess," Neal reassures her. "Another time, Moz."

She says, "No, it's okay. We've got a chess board here somewhere." It was a wedding present, and they've barely touched it in those ten years. When Neal finds it she remembers why: the squares and pieces are made from slate, all very stylish and natural, but you can't play a game when everything is in those confusing shades of grey. Chess is meant to be black and white.

She watches as Mozzie arranges the pieces and Neal says things like, "Byrne versus Bobby Fischer, 1956," and without any hesitation answers Mozzie's challenges for more information. No hesitation until Mozzie rearranges the board a fourth time. His face isn't puzzled, just... blank, and finally he says, "Caffrey versus Keller, 2003."

Mozzie blinks at him, as if he was trying to be subtle about a message and Neal just ruined it for him.

"Who's Keller?" El asks.

"Chess club," Mozzie says quickly.

Neal says, "Some guy I ran with for a while. This was the last game we played."

Mozzie gapes at him and abruptly asks El, "Are you drugging him?"

"Excuse me?" she says indignantly.

"This isn't the Neal Caffrey I know. This is a whole different person."

"Caffrey's gone," Neal says. "I'm not a person anymore."

"Neal!" they both object.

He gives them a placid shrug and starts putting the chess pieces back in their box. "That's what the law says."

"That's what Stockholm Syndrome says," Mozzie retorts. El's too off-balance to do more than stare.

"I'm just adjusting to reality."

"What about Kate? I should ask Keller to help her?"

A flash of something dark and frightening — anger or jealousy or despair — crosses his face, and is gone. "Maybe you should," he agrees pleasantly. He takes the chess set back upstairs and stays there cleaning the bathroom until Mozzie's long gone and the casserole's nearly done.

*

El can't shake a feeling of disquiet, or stop looking at Neal to try and pin down what's wrong with him.

Peter is more mistrustful, certain Neal's planning something with Mozzie and this Matthew Keller. Neither Neal's proclaimed disinterest in Keller, nor his acquiescence when it's clear Peter wants to investigate, allay his suspicions.

And when they finally corner Keller — force him to choose between going to the Russians without any of the money he owes them, or staying with Peter and confessing to his crimes — even El can't make sense of him deciding to take his chances with the Russian mob. "But you said they'd kill him," she says to Neal.

He tips his head noncommittally.

Peter says from his beer, "He didn't care. Even quoted Patrick Henry: 'Give me liberty or give me death.'"

She frowns, looking at Neal. He rubs her arm as if to reassure her that _he_ doesn't think that way, and points out, "Murderers don't get sold to nice families in the suburbs."

"I suppose not," she admits, and squeezes his hand. She doesn't know where they do get sold; she prefers not to think about it. What would she do about anyway, except sign petitions and vote for politicians who break their promises anyway? At least they've got Neal here, safe and sound.

In the heavy silence that follows, Peter's phone rings. He sets down his beer and checks the screen: "It's Jones," he says, and answers it. His brow furrows at what he hears. "What?" he asks, and "When was this?" and "How much were they worth? Right. Right." He looks, when he hangs up, like he just swallowed sour milk. "Did you know about this?" he demands of Neal.

He shakes his head in confusion. "Know about what?"

"The auction house slaves that just got stolen on the way to their buyer?"

Neal's face traces the same path from furrows into sourness. "Let me guess, they're fenceable for a million dollars."

"You're the expert in fencing things," Peter retorts, "but the auction house sold them for nine point seven."

"Yeah, that'd do it."

El looks back and forth between them. "You think Keller took them?"

"Always have a plan B," Neal says.

Peter says, "Or this whole case was a distraction all along."

"Peter, I swear I didn't know about this. I know how much you wanted to catch him."

"And you were all over leaving him to it," Peter accuses.

"I thought you wouldn't want me to have anything to do with him. I did everything you asked, Peter."

And the thing that's been niggling at the back of El's head since Mozzie's visit suddenly clicks into focus. "When did you stop wanting things?"

He blinks at her in alarm, then flashes her a readily mischievous smile. "I want things. Like quiche... then cheesecake... then maybe we can go upstairs and—"

"I mean things we don't all want. Things for yourself."

"Like a glass of wine in a nice bar? Because that kind of thing just gets me in trouble, so I'm gonna stick with the quiche tonight."

With that levity he kisses her neck and stands up, but Peter catches him back down again. "Hey," he says gruffly. "You want something, you tell us. No sneaking around behind our backs to get it."

"I'm not sneaking," he protests. "I've got a nice house in Brooklyn and a wonderful family. What more could I want?" But they hold firm and finally he runs a hand through his hair and looks up pleadingly. "Okay, but you've got to hear me out, okay? Because I love you."

El smiles fondly: she never tires of hearing that.

"I want to be with you," he continues. "I just feel like I'm in this in-between space between being your slave and being... someone who calls you Peter and Elizabeth."

"What are you talking about?" Peter asks.

"Master—"

"Neal," he says warningly.

El adds, "We told you you don't have to call us that."

"What if I want to? What if I need to — to be, I don't know, just clear in my head."

"We don't want you to think of us like that. We don't want to _be_ that. Neal, you know we're only your owners because we care about you."

"I'd stay even if you weren't my owners," he says.

She smiles and takes his hand. "We know you would."

He nods soberly. "So you could free me and I'd stay and nothing would change."

As El gapes for words, Peter sighs. "Neal, you'd steal something. You'd get caught, and they wouldn't let us buy you again."

"I wouldn't, Peter. If I could stay with you I wouldn't need to."

"Maybe you think that now, but you wouldn't be able to help yourself."

Gently El adds, "Even if you didn't, Neal, think how it would look if we freed you and you kept living with us." He shakes his head in confusion. "Peter's got a career, I've got clients..."

He closes his mouth and looks back down at the table. "Right. I forgot. The only reason no-one cares now is because I'm not a person."

"Don't say that!" she protests, squeezing his hand with her determination to make him listen to her. "Forget all of that— that legal palaver. You're a person to _us_. Besides, if nothing would change then what does it even matter what a piece of paper says?"

He keeps shaking his head. Peter's opening his mouth to scold him when he forestalls it with a sudden, "No, you're right." He looks up, smile warm in his eyes. "You're right, the only thing that matters is what you think about me."

"And we love you," she reminds him, and is relieved to see his smile warm even more. "And anything you want, you just tell us."

"Oh, I will," he promises, with a kiss that makes his meaning clear, and then remembers: "But I'd better get this quiche before it burns. —Unless you want some PDAs too?" he adds straight-faced to Peter.

"Oh, you can give me some PDAs later," Peter returns.

"Okey-dokey," Neal says, but can't resist resting a hand on Peter's shoulder, as if to balance himself as he stands up, and brushing against his neck as he swaggers to the kitchen.

El smirks into her wine at Peter's expression. From what she's been able to gather about that night in the motel, they were both a bit traumatised by Neal's... faux pas. But she suspects Neal's at least partially right about Peter liking him to take the lead, and she thinks in time she'll be able to bring them both around to trying it out again in a safer environment.

"Don't look at me like that," he grumbles, but the way he's holding his beer bottle up to his lips ready to take the last mouthful makes it pretty hard not to. Defensively — and not-so-secretly pleased — he adds, "I feel like we started off talking about something else."

"You'll catch Keller next time," she tells him firmly. "Forget him. Tonight's all about us."


	15. False Front

Peter's flooded with relief when he finds Neal at the airport, and has to fight not to let it show. If Wilkes is watching, who knows what he might do to Mr Gless' daughter. He makes his approach instead in disguise and with a map: "You happen to know where I can catch a shuttle to the city?"

Neal manages a smile through his grimness. He's dressed like a chauffeur: a high-end one, employed, not owned. "No need for the cloak and dagger," he says. "Wilkes isn't here."

Rice hears that over the transceiver and comes over to join them. "We're here to help you get out of this mess, kid."

"Thank you, ma'am," he says, more politely than Peter would have, given that she's the one who got him into this mess. "Master, if I don't get this guy's briefcase to Wilkes by four, he'll sell Lindsay as a slave."

"Good. That buys us some time." Neal gives him a look this side of incredulous and he explains, "Even if he can find someone stupid enough to buy a sixteen-year-old without a record, she can just tell anyone they cross paths with who she is."

Possibly he should have predicted what happens next. Neal gives a single shake of his head and darts across the hall to a nearby airport security guard. "You've got to help me!" he pleads. "These people kidnapped me, my name's—"

"Hey," the guard calls to Peter and Rice, "this your slave?"

He'd bang his head against a brick wall, if one presented itself. "I am really sorry—"

"No," Neal interrupts desperately, and damn but the boy can act. "You can look me up, I don't have a record, my name's Nicholas Halden, you can take my fingerprints—"

"Neal, that's enough," Peter says, and tells the guard. "Look, I've got ID—"

The guard waves it away. "Just keep your collar on him, okay? Don't want him slipping on a plane to Toronto."

"Right, but I've got my ID—"

Rice puts in, "Thanks, we've got it from here," and the guard nods and turns away.

"Nicholas Halden!" Neal calls after him. "Look me up!"

"Okay, you've made your point," Peter tells him, though he's not entirely convinced. Neal Caffrey's lies always were more persuasive than most people's plain truths.

He subsides and says more quietly, "I told her she should tell people they've stolen her from her real owner. But that doesn't help if they keep her locked up."

"You've talked to her?" Rice asks. "Where?"

"I don't know, ma'am. Wilkes tazed me. But her guard was eating mushu pork from a restaurant called Walk of Fire."

"Alright," Peter says: they already know she's in a a pre-Civil War building by the water. "We can work with that."

"Master, please let me stay here. If you don't get to Lindsay in time..."

"Yeah," he says, and gives him the two-way transceiver Jones is listening in on. He doesn't like leaving him when he's only just found him, but they've got a kidnapped girl to think about. And at least he knows Jones isn't going to be letting him get on a plane any time soon.

*

Barely an hour later they've arrested Wilkes and his minions, got Caffrey back safe and sound, and most importantly reunited Lindsay with her father. There's even a camera crew on the way to give Rice her fifteen minutes.

"Thanks for playing round two," Lindsay says to Neal.

He smiles as coquettishly as a slave can manage with his eyes to the ground. "Don't mention it, miss."

She opens her mouth, then closes it again and looks appealingly at her father. Gless's arm has been around her shoulders as protectively as Peter is holding Neal's arm, but with a rub of her back he tips his head to Peter. "Can we...?"

Warily Peter leaves Neal there and follows Gless, just out of earshot.

Without any more preamble Gless says, "Lindsay wants me to ask you about buying Neal."

Peter blinks. "Oh," he says eloquently.

Gless names a sum. And, while Peter opens and shuts his mouth, he adds, "Just to be clear, if there's still any property subject to forfeiture, I'd be excluding the owner's rights from the purchase."

"That's... quite an offer," Peter manages. He and El have talked about what they'd do if someone wanted to buy Neal. It's just they were always expecting it to be someone after his stash, not someone explicitly waiving all claim to it. Someone who apparently just wants Neal for himself. Or at least is so relieved to have his daughter back that he thinks he does. The answer's the same in any case. "I'm sorry, but Neal's not for sale."

Gless makes a fair attempt to persuade him, but doesn't press the point when it's clear Peter's made up his mind. They shake hands and Gless heads back to break the news to his daughter. Peter, still reeling a little, gets caught up with Jones reporting in on Wilkes and the gold cards that were in Riley's briefcase, so it's a while before he notices— "Where's Neal?"

Jones stops mid-sentence and looks around. "He's not with Rice?"

"Not me," Rice tells Peter. "He's your slave, remember?"

He's gone. Again. Because he's Neal. "Damn it," Peter says, "you've got to be kidding me. Jones, handle things here. I'll be checking the usual suspects."

*

The number of usual suspects has grown without him quite realising how much. Joining the list of Kate Moreau's old haunts are: Grand Central Station; the coffee shop near El's event that one time; the pizza parlour that other time; the bar Neal was drinking at last time. _I thought you knew I'd come back,_ Neal said back then. Peter doesn't believe it, not really, but it's that or go ahead and report him as a fugitive slave, so he checks the Bureau, the park where he walks Satchmo, and finally their house.

Which means explaining to El, which thankfully doesn't go as badly as he feared. She's worried, of course, but she's also relieved that he's safe from Wilkes, and she's a lot more certain than Peter is that Neal will return of his own free will.

Even as it darkens outside and a phone call to Mozzie (Peter's not quite sure when she got the strange man's number but they'd never have tracked down Neal in the first place without his help) yields nothing.

"I'm not so sure he'd tell us if he did have Neal," Peter points out.

"He wouldn't let us worry," El says with a strained confidence. She's making soup, for something to do as much as because she's determined to believe Neal will walk in the door any minute now. "Do you think Neal heard Mr Gless offering to buy him?"

"Maybe," Peter says. He's pacing, because there's nothing he can do here and he believes less and less every minute that Neal's about to saunter in with a cocky grin on his face. "Maybe he heard the guy at the airport talk about how easy it is for a slave to slip onto a plane to Toronto."

"He wouldn't do that," El insists.

Peter shakes his head, and grabs his coat. "I'm going to look some more."

"I'll phone if he gets back before you do."

Satchmo's waiting mournfully on the doormat. He perks up when Peter goes to open the door. "Sorry, boy, no walk tonight," Peter says. He goes out — and almost trips over Neal sitting in the dark on the step.

"What the—?"

Without a word, Neal pulls himself up. He takes a last leisurely look at the streetlights and the shadows, and turns to slip past Peter back into the house. Satchmo yips happily.

Peter stands a moment, stunned, then wheels around and slams the door shut behind them both. It startles Satchmo off of his enthusiastic greeting. "Why the hell were you sitting out there?"

"I couldn't decide," he says vaguely.

El, out of the kitchen like a spring from a box, demands, "Decide what?"

He blinks slowly, then puts on his least convincing smile ever. "Whether to knock or pick the lock?"

She slaps him. In the frozen tableau afterwards, Peter could swear he hears it echo. Then as abruptly she's fiercely hugging him. "God, Neal, I didn't mean to do that. You just worried us so much. How could you do that to us?"

"I'm sorry," he says hoarsely, then again, "Both of you. I'm sorry."

"What were you thinking?" Peter demands.

"I'm sorry, it was stupid—"

"Neal," El says, pulling back to arm's length the better to see him, "you know we'd never sell you, don't you?" He nods, hollow-eyed. "Not for any money."

"You're ours," Peter adds. He pulls out the coil of collar he's had in his pocket since Rice let Neal get taken. It feels good putting it around his neck, pushing the ends together and hearing the click that only their app (or the Marshalls Rice talked to) can undo. He rests his hand there on Neal's collared neck, and gives it a fond shake. "You need to stop getting yourself stolen by my criminals."

Neal laughs dutifully.

Peter looks at him more closely. "You're okay, right? Wilkes didn't hurt you?"

"I'm fine," he says.

Ruefully El says, "And two steps in the door you get yourself slapped."

"I'm sorry I worried you," he says as she strokes his reddened cheek.

"Poor boy. Forget soup, let's head upstairs and make it up to you."

"The soup actually smells really fantastic."

"Flatterer," she laughs and kisses his forehead, then goes to the kitchen to turn the stove off.

"Let's get you out of that costume," Peter says.

"Yeah, okay." But upstairs he turns to his own room and Peter has to catch his wrist and pull him back out. "Honestly, I'm not up for this tonight."

"Yeah, we've heard that before," Peter points out. The nights Neal teases them with his evasiveness often turn out the best of all. He's not expecting that much tonight — it's been a long day for all of them — but the thought of it's enough to make him want to hurry this along. "Come on, Neal."

"My head's just really not in it right now."

El joins them with a stern, "That's why we're going to take care of you. You really think you can go missing for a day and not get pampered when you come back?"

"I know, and I'm really grateful, but please, what I really need is a hot shower and some sleep. We can do this tomorrow," he says winningly. "Take the day off."

"You know I've got that wedding," El reminds him.

"And you're not getting out of mortgage fraud that easily," Peter says. He gives him a friendly shove towards the bedroom while El draws him in by the hand.

Neal pulls away into a corner. "Please. Please, I want you to stop."

It jangles, like they're planning to beat him instead of kiss him. There's being coy and then there's being a brat: Peter snaps, "For God's sake, Neal, I thought Doctor Westlake got this out of your system."

He stops talking at last, and goes with them to the bed. El precedes him onto it, and Peter perches on the edge beside him, giving him a long, hard kiss and sliding a hand up his thigh. Neal's slower to respond than usual, but not that much slower. El nibbles at his neck from behind and gets his jacket out of the way and he leans back against her, eyes shutting and an unsteady breath escaping his lips.

"That's my boy," she murmurs in his ear. "How does that feel?"

"Tickles."

She laughs, which Peter knows from experience tickles even more, and tugs at the knot in his tie. Peter strokes Neal's cock through the pants Wilkes dressed him in. He's not as hard as Peter already is, but — yes, there he is. Peter strokes it again, feeling that living heat and delighting as he always does that this is all theirs. He kisses him again, then leans a little further and kisses El: she kisses back with a shared and knowing warmth.

But she doesn't stop working on Neal's buttons. Not until she can slip a hand in and run it over his chest. Just thinking about her toying with his own nipples makes Peter's cock give another kick. He cups it with his free hand.

"Wait for me," El says, nose in Neal's hair. "Neal first tonight."

"Okay," he agrees: the ache in his groin is pleasant at the moment, and he's more interested anyway in opening Neal's fly.

Something El does makes Neal's breath hitch. "You like that?" she asks.

"Nn— You're really good at that," he says.

"That she is," Peter says in amusement. The pants are open, but boxers are still in the way; there's a short awkward interlude while he wrestles things down and El tugs out the shirt tails, and then Peter's unselfconsciously getting to his knees to inhale—

"Neal," El exclaims, "what _happened_ to you?"

Peter looks up. Neal sits unresponsive, eyes still shut and only the bob of his Adam's apple to show he even heard her. El's got his shirt off and is staring in horror at his back. His ribs look bruised enough from the front, but when Peter gets up and joins El he can see the taser burns and something that must be worse than taser burns to have a bandage taped over it.

"You told me he didn't hurt you," he accuses, as El sets her jaw and gets a fingernail under a corner of tape.

"I said I was fine," he says. "Please don't—"

"This is not fine!"

El rips the bandage off, and Neal cries out and pulls away. They see only a glimpse of a darker burn, and an even angrier cut in the middle of it, before he stumbles off the bed with one hand holding up his pants, and turns on them. "He didn't fuck me and make me pretend to enjoy it!" he snaps, and instantly staggers back another step in dismay. "I didn't say that. I didn't mean— I _told_ you my head's fucked up right now. I can't—"

"Neal, stop," El orders. "You need to tell us what he did to you."

He gulps air in an attempt to control himself. "He tased me. F-four times. I— I think the first time shorted the microchip but he got one of his men to dig it out anyway. They sterilised the knife. Just like for a bullet. And he punched me and kicked me some."

"And you were just _fine_ with all this," Peter says angrily.

"I hated him, okay? I _hated_ him, and I decided I was going to _destroy_ him, and it was the first time in months I didn't hate _myself_ , and then—" Tears well as a giant hiccup wracks his body and all he can manage from there is an incoherent gasping, "Please— I'm sorry— Can't we just—"

Peter looks helplessly at El. She clambers off the bed, catches Neal as he tries to back away, and holds a hand to his forehead.

He whispers a desperately rushed, "You said I could tell you what I want and I just want to go to bed."

"You're delirious," she says firmly. "We're taking you to the after-hours for some _qualified_ medical attention."


	16. Boxed Up

Neal gets better with rest and antibiotics. Even the next morning he seems back to his normal cheerful, affectionate self, only wincing in embarrassment when El uneasily brings up what he said last night. "I _really_ shouldn't have stayed out in the cold so long."

It's a relief, but she asks to be sure: "That's all it was?"

His kiss (nothing cold about that, not in the slightest) is answer enough.

But she's paying attention now, and there are still shadows around his eyes — or in them, in quiet moments when he thinks no-one's looking. She's grateful when Mozzie turns up out of nowhere with a giant block of clay. It seems just the thing to help Neal get over the trauma of what Wilkes did to him.

It works almost too well. Every spare moment he can sneak away from them, he works on it in a cramped corner of the laundry. He'd work all night if they let him. Late one evening, when she's looking for clingwrap and starting to think she's going to have to do the dishes herself, he comes out and takes the leftovers off her without a word.

She settles her irritation and asks sympathetically, "How's it going?"

He grimaces. "Something's not right about it."

"Maybe it'll come to you tomorrow."

"Yeah, whatever."

She blinks at his curtness as he rattles in the cupboard for tupperware. "Neal—"

"I've got this," he interrupts. "Go watch the game with Peter."

She stands there instead, rethinking everything. "You know, I'm starting to think this isn't actually helping you."

"I'm fine. I just need to get it _right_."

"Neal, I think you need a break from it."

"I'm doing the dishes, aren't I?"

"It's almost bedtime, Neal. And you're not yourself: ever since Mozzie brought the clay over you've been obsessed with it. You've been neglecting your chores and, frankly, your attitude simply isn't acceptable." He tries to put in an apology, but it's transparently just so he can have the discussion over with and go back to his sculpting. She tries to look at it through his eyes, and realises: "It's reminding you of... before. Isn't it? You're looking back with rose-coloured glasses, but Neal, that's the past. It's over."

"I know that, but I need to get this—"

Mozzie probably knew exactly what he was doing, bringing the clay around and letting it stir up old memories of his criminal life. "No," she says gently, "you need to get rid of it."

"What?" he says in alarm. "No, please—"

It's enough to make her feel like an ogre, and she has to remind herself it's for his own good. "I know you don't want to right now, but it's going to be better for you in the long run. Take it out to the curb, please. I'm going to call Mozzie to pick it up."

"Please can't we just talk about this?" he begs.

She can't bear to continue the conversation in the face of that. She gets her phone: calling Mozzie makes it very clear where she stands, and by the time she's hung up, Neal's glumly hefting his half-finished sculpture out of the laundry. She can see why he says it's not right. There's a shape in there trying to get out, but it's a tortured one, and the surface looks like he's thrown slip all over it to erase a first attempt at features and start again.

He tries once more, "Couldn't I just take a break for a while?"

"It's for the best," she promises, and gets started on the dishes herself to make it up to him.

*

"No, Satchmo," she hears from upstairs a couple of evenings later, "Neal doesn't get to play with you tonight."

She sighs and goes down to them: she thought things had been improving again. But Peter's glaring even as Neal meekly hangs up both their coats. "What's he done now?"

"Tell her, Neal," Peter says, and gets a pleading look in return. "Go on. Tell her what you did."

"I... finished the sculpture," he admits.

El shakes her head in confusion. "But Mozzie took it away."

"Before that," he says miserably. "I finished it and covered it in clingwrap and slip."

"And inside it?" Peter prompts.

He can't meet El's eyes. "I hid a bag of tools."

"Safecracking tools," Peter specifies. "For a heist at the Italian consulate. The Italians aren't saying anything about what was stolen—"

"They weren't supposed to have it in the first place," Neal justifies himself.

"So you do know what it was?" Peter demands.

He looks away from them both, and admits, "The music box Fowler wanted in exchange for Kate."

That, more even than the idea that Neal's been an accomplice to a theft right under their noses, takes El's breath away. "You said you were over that!"

"I did _not_ say that," he protests, and overrides her objection that he damn well did with a shamefaced, "I just... let you believe it."

"You—" He's a con artist, she remembers, her mind whirling with how far the lies must stretch. "Like you let me believe doing that sculpture was making you miserable, so I'd let you send it back to Mozzie?" He has the gall to give her a hurt look: she could slap him. "You _conned_ me," she says, and does shove him.

He backs away with his hands up in placation. "I'm sorry—"

"Are you?" She follows him furiously, and shoves him again. Not hard, but he backs up more quickly until he bumps against the wall. "How would I know?"

"Mistress, I get—"

She does slap him for that. He _knows_ she hates being called that. He flinches, and his head cracks against the painting hanging there. He looks at it in alarm, but it's fine, just knocked a little askew and— Quickly he pulls it straight.

"Honey," Peter starts: he didn't see the inkwork.

She grabs the painting and lifts it off the wall. She hardly registers Neal trying to sidle away and Peter catching his arm tight. All she can see is — it's Toronto. She recognises the cityscape from stock footage on newscasts about fugitive slaves. It's done with a pointillist technique in four colours of ballpoint pens, millions of pixels giving it the allure of the inaccessible, the mythical. On the wall of their lounge. In utter incomprehension she says, " _Why_...?"

"Check the others," Peter grits.

It takes her a moment to realise what he means, and even then — _surely_ Neal wouldn't have done this more than once? But he's sagging in Peter's grasp, his face a mix of alarm and resignation. Peter's right. She circles the room, taking down artwork after artwork, and behind each one (where did he find the time? how did he do this without them noticing? _why_?) is another bewilderment.

A stone bridge in wistful strokes: the red and black of a stormy sunset, or a billowing fire.

A fountain and empty park bench in Madison Square Park, that Monet might have painted if Monet had painted in scribbled shadings sponsored by Bic.

A map she saw once briefly on a tattered wine label. The lines are deftly swift, as if done in a rush to commit it to a fixed form.

She starts seeing patterns.

Behind the hanging of the stylised birds: a songbird in a cage pecks at a bowl of seed filled to overflowing, while a flock in the distance surges up through the boundless heights of the sky.

Behind the still life of the apples: a bowl of pomegranates and a hand — Neal's hand — reaching for them. And the light, falling on them from where Neal/Persephone stands out of view, is the light of a spring morning and of everything s/he'll leave behind by choosing to stay in the underworld.

Is the hand reaching or pulling back? El can't tell. She doesn't want to know. She flees it, and...

Behind their honeymoon photo on the stairs: a grotesque parody of Picasso, solid miscoloured disjointed bodyparts. Neal's mouthless head faces one way, his body the other; he has a collar but no neck. Peter's lips are on his turgid cock on one side while his hips pound his arse from the other. One of El's hands tears violently at his hair and the other fondly strokes his chest.

She backs down the stairs, swallowing bile and wanting to cover her mouth with a hand that looks too much like that repulsive, repulsive— "Why would you _do_ this?" she demands with shaking voice. She doesn't dare look at his face, not even at Peter's for fear she'll see that _abomination_ in his features.

"I— I needed a space—"

"We'd have given you paper!" she cries. "We gave you everything, and you— you violated our home."

"I never wanted to hurt you," he implores, "you have to believe me."

Peter says harshly, "We don't care what you wanted. You conned us to rob a consulate, you vandalised our house — you just can't help yourself, can you?"

There are drawings everywhere El looks: even closing her eyes is no escape. "They have to go."

Neal agrees quickly, "I'll hang everything back—"

"No," she says, shuddering at the idea of them lurking just out of sight. "They _go_. You know where those leftover paint tins are."

"I—" It ends in a gulp, and when she looks to see why he isn't leaping to make what pitiful amends he still can, his face is stricken. "Please. They're— They're all I have."

Speechless with rage she grabs his arm and tears him away from Peter. He stumbles on the way to the laundry, and again as she pushes him inside, but catches himself and keeps moving: to one cupboard for a brush, another for an old curtain for a dropcloth, and finally the paint.

Peter holds her, and they both watch him standing in front of his sketch of Kate's map, lifting the paint-laden brush like it's a snake. "If we can't trust him out of our sight," Peter says, and how can they? They really wanted to trust him, but he keeps giving them reasons not to. "We need to get him a leash. And a cage."

She never wanted to be a slaveowner. But they have no choice. She nods unhappily, and Neal paints his first grim stroke to erase all sign he ever raised pen to wall.

*

The penstrokes bleed through the paint. They seep out from behind the picture frames, black and red and green and blue, oily strings uncoiling themselves, growing and spreading like a vile ivy. And she knows she made a mistake, a terrible mistake: she didn't make them go away at all, only covered them up, but _they're still there_.

She wakes in terror, and can barely breathe for thinking about that horrid group portrait of body parts. "Why is he making us so ugly?" she asks Peter in that groggy space between dream and dark, dark night.

"Come here," he says, "come here," and holds her tight.

In the other room Neal is sleeping on a mattress in the largest cage they could find. There's no less room there than his bed, and he went without complaint. It's El's heart that's breaking, thinking of everything that's been lost between the three of them.


	17. Boxing Match

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (Got to include an acknowledgement here that part of this chapter was directly inspired by some chapters of AliWC's "It is what it is" starting at http://archiveofourown.org/works/225711/chapters/507627 )
> 
> * * *

Peter takes Neal in to work despite everything, because God knows El can't deal with him today. The leash makes it refreshingly easy to keep him close in the crowd. And when he spots, lurking with a suspicious black duffel bag, the brunette Neal was flirting with in the bar; and thinks "Wait. _Wait,_ " just as she realises she's been made and takes off — it's even easier to just gather the leash and clip it around a lamppost and run after the woman unencumbered.

She leads him a merry chase. It's two blocks before he realises what's going on and sprints back to the lamppost.

Most of the leash remains. A pair of bolt cutters sticks out of a trashcan; a short man wearing a cap and earmuffs disappears around a corner; in another direction a rapidly departing taxi bears away the silhouette of Neal's head and shoulders. By the time Peter's flagged down a taxi of his own, Neal's is out of sight. He's not worried by that until he looks up his phone app and it tells him Neal's safely at home.

Why isn't the collar transmitting? he wonders, and realises in the same breath: Fowler. He's manipulated Neal's collar before. Now he's shut Neal down so he can deliver the musicbox.

"Turn here," he says on a hunch: Neal would never go straight. "And speed it up. I need to catch up with another taxi."

The cabdriver obediently flicks the indicator on, but says placidly, "I can't go any faster without breaking the law, sir."

He shoves his badge in the kid's face. "Speed it up or I talk to your owner about you aiding an escaped recidivist."

The cabbie suddenly rediscovers his ability to move through the traffic. Peter spots what _feels_ in his gut like Neal's cab making another turn. They follow it, lose it again, and then suddenly catch up to it, empty.

"Stop here." He throws some cash in the front and gets out to sprint back the way he came. He scans everything he passes, suspicious of doors and manholes. But then he spots a black Ford driving past on the cross-road, windows tinted, slowing as it disappears from sight. It has to be Fowler: Peter picks up his pace.

The car's parked at the end of an alleyway. Voices come from just inside the alley's entrance.

Neal: "Okay, you've seen it. Now let me see what I'm getting."

Fowler: "All the papers you need. —Uh uh. The bag for the envelope."

There's a long silence, because Neal's not stupid. But he must be desperate, because next thing Fowler's stepping out of the alley with the bag slung over his shoulder.

Peter lifts his gun and Fowler stops short, just as Neal calls, "Hey! We had a deal, Fowler."

Fowler half-turns, and lifts a warding hand.

"Back off, Neal," Peter snaps.

Momentum brings Neal the last step into view, but he's already faltering. He looks at Peter and his gun with wide eyes. His chest heaves, and he lowers his fist. His other hand is clenched whitely on a sheaf of blank letterhead.

Fowler snorts. "Like I said, boy, all the papers you _need_. You really thought I was going to help a recidivist escape?"

"You son of a—"

"Neal."

Neal spins on a dime: "Master, he's got the music box in that bag."

"That's a good story," Fowler says carelessly. "Shame Agent Burke doesn't have probable cause unless a _person_ tells him that."

Peter grits his teeth and holsters his gun. "I'm not done with this investigation, Fowler."

"Relax, Burke. No reason either of us needs to see the other again." He turns to his car; Neal lunges for the bag; Fowler throws a punch that knows what it's doing and backs it up with another. Before Peter can get in between them, Neal's flat on his back, mouth bloody and gulping for air. "You should put that on a leash," Fowler tells Peter.

And all Peter can do is watch him drive away with the music box, while Neal curls onto his side and spits blood. "Goddammit, Neal, we could have _had_ him. But you just couldn't help yourself."

Neal closes his eyes and doesn't say anything.

He turns and turns again in frustration. Less at losing Fowler than at not being able to get through to Neal. Apparently the brat's never going to get that trying to escape is exactly the criminal conduct that landed him where he is in the first place. But the constant attempts are driving them all up the wall. If he won't accept that he _shouldn't_ , can Peter at least convince him that he _can't_?

He eyes up the alleyway. It's a deadend: thirty-foot tall warehouses in cinderblock on one side and corrugated iron on the other. Another building at the end has a fire escape, but too high to reach from the ground and the door it issues from is solid steel. The entrance here is fairly wide, but not unmanageably so, and none of the traffic that passes is of the curious variety.

"Get up," he tells Neal and, when he's on his feet again, gestures: "Back in there."

Neal looks over his shoulder, looks charily at Peter, then obeys. He walks in about half the length of the alley before turning.

Peter stops a fourth of the way in and says, "Thirty minutes. You try and escape, I try and stop you."

He shakes his head tiredly. "You don't need a setup to knock me around a bit. I know I probably deserve it."

"Oh, you definitely deserve it. But this isn't a setup, it's a deal. If you escape, I'll set you free." Neal blinks at him as if he can't tell if Peter's joking or not. "But if you can't escape in the next thirty minutes, you stop trying. For good. You accept that this is your life now and you stop making _our_ lives hell."

"Shouldn't you be running this by your wife?"

"Right now I'm pretty sure El would say to hell with the deal, let's just send you straight back to the Processing Centre."

Neal grimaces in agreement. "So... what are the rules?"

"No rules. You get one foot out of the alley, you're home clear."

"And you won't go and arrest me for absconding, or assaulting a federal agent, or—"

"Full immunity for any crimes you commit while trying to escape in the next thirty minutes. —Of course, you murder me and you're on your own." Neal twists a weak smile at the bad joke, and Peter turns sober. "But you've got to understand, Neal, if you walk away from this — from us — there's no going back. We won't be there for you. You don't get to take anything with you, and if you steal so much as a newspaper I will track you down and your new owner won't be anywhere near as lenient as El and I have been."

He looks away unhappily, and for a moment Peter thinks he might be realising just what that would mean. But he says, "I don't want to walk away from you. But I _need_ to be free."

He _needs_ to get this out of his system. "And if you lose—"

"If I lose," he echoes, and with a deep breath he agrees, "I'll be the perfect slave for the rest of my life."

Peter tosses his coat and gloves against a wall and sets the countdown on his watch. "Time starts now."

Neal rushes him. Peter stops him. He tries again and Peter stops him again. There are more than a few feints, but Peter would have been disappointed if there weren't. There's wrestling, and then Neal backs off again for a run-up to another unsuccessful rush.

He alternates and circles back to different methods at seeming random. Now he's simply running straight at Peter; now he's bouncing off one wall or the other like a cueball; now he's dropping under Peter's arm and rolling; now he's standing, gasping for breath, and looking like he's starting to realise that it's hopeless. "Listen," he says.

"I'm not pausing the timer," Peter returns. He's barely winded; he's actually enjoying it. Neal's escapes have always been sprints, but Peter's pursuit was always a marathon. It's almost like old times.

"I know," Neal says, and starts walking towards him, palms out. "But, Peter, there's got to be another way. All or nothing? I don't accept that."

Peter watches him for a sign of which way he's about to feint or dash, and refuses to be distracted by his own arousal. "That's the deal."

"So change the deal. Make a better one — one where I get my freedom _and_ you get to keep me."

"You always think you can have it all," Peter accuses him, and finds Neal kissing him, forceful and possessive. He grabs both his arms preemptively, but _God_ it's good when Neal takes the lead. He leans in, abruptly hard and wanting more. Forget the industrial grime and the March chill, Peter could fuck him — be fucked by him — right here and now.

Except they both know where that leads.

Peter throws him to the ground and takes a step back to clear his head. It brings the wire fencing of the entrance into his peripheral vision and he realises how far Neal's pushed him. When Neal's halfway to his feet, Peter grabs him by the collar and propels him back to the middle of the alley.

"If I was free, you wouldn't have to wonder whether or not I meant it," Neal says.

Peter backs up to his own starting spot, and glances at his watch. "You've got nineteen min—"

Neal's running again, but not at Peter. He's sprinting to the other end of the alley, the deadend — the fire exit that can't be reached from the ground, but with one desperate leap Neal gets his hands on the bottom rung. His weight pulls it down, he scrambles up, and pulls it up after himself an instant before Peter reaches it.

Peter rapidly backs away again, in case Neal plans to jump over his head. But Neal's prying at the steel door instead. For a moment the bottom drops out of Peter's stomach, as he thinks: Neal never walks into a meet without an escape route. What if whoever arranged this for him—

But the seconds pass and Neal gets nowhere with the door. He resorts to pounding on it with both fists, shouting for help, screaming bloody murder, and the response is the same.

Finally he slumps to the platform, only his head and the tops of his knees still in Peter's sight. He sits there so long Peter calls to remind him, "The clock's running, Neal."

Neal gets to his feet, looks down at him, and then starts climbing up the fire escape's rickety railing.

"Neal, what are you—" His eyes follow Neal's, up to the roof of the warehouse clad in corrugated iron. It's not as far from where Neal stands now as the ladder was from the ground, but Neal's _standing_ now. He's got no runup, no leverage— "Neal, _no_!" he shouts, as Neal teeters on top of the railing. One hand on the wall for balance, knees bending in readiness— "Jesus, Neal—"

And Neal jumps.

And his hand closes on the gutter.

For a terrifying moment Peter thinks he's going to make it — and then, in an even more terrifying moment, the gutter tears loose from the roof.

"Neal!"

His body is black in the blue sky. Peter thinks of that sketch of the birds, rising as a flock while the caged one looks on from below. But Neal's falling, though he kicks off the wall, twists in the air and reaches— His fingers grasp and slip from the fire escape, barely slowed, and without thought Peter is there beneath him.

Neal hits like a truck, and so does the ground. They roll together, and lie stunned. Peter's hand is on Neal's collar: he doesn't let go until he's sure he can untangle himself and get back to his feet without worrying about Neal taking advantage of the moment.

"Are you out of your mind?" he demands.

"I knew you'd catch me," Neal says simply. He struggles to his feet as Peter shakes his head in disbelief. He honestly doesn't seem to realise they could have both been killed.

And it begins again. The feints, the dodges, the sudden rushes — but Peter senses his efforts now are only pro forma. Maybe he's tiring. (Even Peter's starting to. Being used as a landing pad didn't help.) Maybe he's finally getting it.

Which is of course when Peter's phone rings. He mutters, "Oh for—" and preemptively puts Neal on the ground before answering it. "Can this wait?"

"Sorry," Jones says. "We just got a tip on Edward Leitch's whereabouts — really need you back here."

He swears under his breath, but Leitch has been eluding them for months. "Yeah," he says, and takes his knee off Neal's back as he puts his phone back in his pocket. "Edward Leitch," he tells him sternly. "Acts of bank robbers do not count as you escaping."

"Got it," Neal says with hands of surrender, and waits for him to gather his coat and gloves. As Peter takes him in hand to search for a cab he adds, "But I still get the rest of my time later, right?"

"Sure," Peter says, glancing at his watch: "All eleven minutes of it."

*

He expects White Collar to be bustling, plans being prepared, phone calls being made, maybe even flak jackets being put on. Instead he finds everyone working quietly at their desks like it's any other day. "What's going on?" he asks Jones, who's reading through a stack of financials over a mug of coffee.

Jones looks up at them and does a double-take. They did their best to clean up on the way, but twenty minutes of face-plants has taken its toll on Neal, and Peter doubts he looks much better.

He waves that off impatiently. "Edward Leitch?"

"What?" Jones says.

He shakes his head. "What?"

"Master," Neal murmurs, "maybe we should talk somewhere private?"

Peter swivels his head to look at him: eyes on the floor, biting his bottom lip. This... makes no sense. Yet his groin is doing its familiar _What's Neal up to now?_ thing, and he's remembering that long half a minute when Neal sat out of sight on the fire escape. "Upstairs," he growls.

Jones includes himself in the order, and closes the door behind them. "You texted me," he says in confusion, and things start to come clear. "You said you needed a recall, make it convincing. I figured you'd got cornered by some annoying VIP somewhere."

"No," he says heavily. (That kiss: to pick his pocket. That death-defying fall: to return the phone. Acts of bank robbers don't count, but acts of con artists—) "It was all Neal."

Jones starts to shake his head, then looks again at Neal's bruised face. "Oh. I see."

"What?" Peter asks again, because how could he possibly? And then he realises what Jones thinks. "No! I wasn't— I made him a deal: if he could escape the alley we were in I'd emancipate him. And there was no way for him to do it, so of _course_ he decides to impersonate a federal agent."

"You said full immunity," Neal puts in quickly.

"I did say that," he admits reluctantly, and narrows his eyes. "So if you won, why do you look so nervous?"

"Judge's decision is final," Neal says, as if he thinks Peter might renege on the deal because he doesn't like how it turns out.

And okay, he _really_ doesn't like how it's turned out. But that's not why Neal's looking so nervous. He runs back through the rules, such as they were, and works it out: "I said you don't get to take anything with you. That includes your stash."

Neal gives him a betrayed look.

"You don't get to profit off your crimes, Neal. You give up your stash and I'll set you free. Not before."

Jones tips his head and turns to go, as if that's the end of the discussion. Which it is, because who'd think Neal Caffrey would give up the stash he's relying on to fund his retirement?

Until Neal Caffrey takes a breath and says, "Okay."

*

Peter doesn't really believe him, of course. He doesn't believe Neal's taking them on anything but a wild goose chase, he doesn't believe this storage company really has anything except dingy furniture and boxes full of personal mementos, and he absolutely does not believe he's really looking at Tamayo's _Tres Personajes_.

Except he is. And a Fabergé egg. And an acid-free archival box containing three letters in an eighteenth-century copperplate. And — God, they spent weeks trying to figure out how Neal got access to that necklace. A shelf full of first editions, pristine in their dust jackets. An Inverted Airmail stamp. A set of silver cutlery. And that's just what Peter can see from the entrance.

"You really got around, huh," says Jones, a little further in.

Neal, reminiscing over another stack of paintings at the far end of the container, shakes his head as if it's all a wonder to him, too. "Guess you're only young once."

"You saying you wouldn't just start all over again?" Peter says sceptically.

Neal's head swivels. " _Wouldn't_?" he echoes in outrage, like it's a betrayal instead of a slip of the tongue.

"I can't believe I'm saying this, Peter," Jones puts in, peering at a bronze statuette, "but it does look like he's held up his end of the bargain."

He defends himself: "This isn't everything. The bank accounts—"

"You got the bank accounts," Neal says indignantly.

"Yeah, after your trustee already withdrew most of the money. Where'd it go?"

"To buy slaves," he bites out. "And free them."

Peter bristles at the insinuation and retorts, "Pretty easy to do with someone else's money."

Neal huffs. "There's a ring on the statue of the violinist at Madison Square Park. Chisel it off, clean it up, and it'll fetch two and a half million. Never been registered as stolen, so it's all yours. If it's money you want."

"This isn't about money, Neal! It's about you lying and trying to keep stolen property. What about the Rafael?" His sudden stillness is telling. "St George and the Dragon?"

"I don't have it." Seeing Peter's angry disbelief, he reluctantly adds, "I might be able to get it. But not wearing this. Set me free, and—"

"That's not how this works. Tell me where—"

"I can't. You don't understand, I _can't_."

"Oh, I understand," he says furiously. "You're a recidivist: you've never changed, you're never going to change, and that's why you're always going to be a slave. Get over here. I don't like not seeing your hands in a place like this."

His face a thunderstorm, Neal moves to obey — then darts back. "Whoa!" Jones says in alarm: at his head is his own Glock, in Neal's hand.

"Neal!" Peter's gun is out in the same instant, but with no target. Jones is too effective a shield.

"Is this better, Master?" Neal demands. His free hand tears off his collar with a flourish and flings it into a corner. Damn whatever Fowler did to that— "You can see my hands _now_."

"Neal, don't do this!" he says desperately. He doesn't want to shoot his own slave, to shoot Neal, but if—

"Put your gun down and back out," Neal tells him.

"You know I can't—"

Jones barely starts to shift and Neal jabs the gun harder against his temple. "Do it or I shoot him."

"He's not the one you want to shoot, Neal."

A noise escapes him, like the cry of a seagull. "I don't want to shoot you, Peter! Eliz— Mistress would—" His hand clenches on the grip. Peter _really_ needs to make him point that somewhere else. As if in perverse obedience to the thought, Neal abruptly turns it on himself and retreats quicker than Jones can move. "I'm getting out, Master. One way or the other."

"Oh, for crying—"

"I'll walk you out," Jones interrupts, and Peter stares.

Neal shakes his head with furious impatience. "Don't lie to me, _sir_. I already heard that promise twice today."

"I'm not lying, boy. Hell, I wish I'd done it four years ago. Ever since Peter got you, you've been making his life a misery. You wind him up and you think the whole office doesn't know it? And now you want to make him watch you blow your brains out." The disgust in his voice makes Neal flinch. Peter's mind is a whirl, knowing it a ruse, and yet— And Jones finishes decisively, "Screw that. I'll walk you out, you can hitch a ride to Toronto, and good riddance to you."

Uncertainly Neal says, "Master won't let you."

"You both put the guns down at the same time. Okay? Peter?" he asks without taking his eyes off Neal. Peter and Neal lock gazes, both hesitating. "Come on," Jones says. "I don't think the bloodspatter's going to improve the value of those paintings."

"I don't care about the value," Peter insists. But Neal's looking torn, and this is their best chance to keep him from shooting his brains out. "Okay. Both at once." Neal doesn't agree, but he doesn't disagree either, so Peter lowers his gun a fraction — a half an inch — and waits for him to follow suit.

"Come on, boy," Jones prompts.

Neal's hand wavers; firms in resolution; wavers again as Peter holds his breath. Then abruptly he drops it, sagging in exhaustion, and doesn't bother looking surprised when Jones slams him against a wall to cuff him.

*

Peter lets Jones take Neal back to the Bureau while he guards the storage container and tries to figure out what the hell to do with the boy. He doesn't get very far, sitting on the floor with his head against the wall by the Tamayo. (Or a very good forgery of the Tamayo. But somehow he suspects it's Sotheby's that ended up with the forgery.) He can't think. The last hour— day— half a year — have sapped everything he had.

Evidence Recovery still haven't arrived when his phone rings. They've got themselves lost, he supposes, but it's Jones: "Peter," he says, sounding distraught. "I just got back to the Bureau. ...Neal's gone."

Peter's beyond surprise, beyond even exasperation. Dully he closes his eyes and asks, "How?"

"I put him in my trunk. He was cuffed, it was locked, but— I'm going back to the lights I stopped at, see if someone saw anything."

"Forget about it," he hears himself saying, and feels instantly that little bit lighter.

Jones pauses. "What do you mean?"

"Just... let him go. You were right. We'll all be better off without him." Without Neal to worry about, everything feels so much easier. He finally hears Evidence Recovery arriving, and pulls himself to his feet. "Let's just get back to work."


	18. Black Box

El's actually relieved when Peter tells her about it: anxiously, over lunch at a nice place where if Neal had still been with them they'd have had to send him to eat in the back room and then worry about how he might get into trouble. ( _Scribbling on their wall_ like a demon-possessed _child_!)

It's at home that evening, with the smell of fresh paint still in the air and Satchmo looking forlorn, that she starts having second thoughts. It's so quiet, without his light banter...

But it wasn't always banter, she reminds herself firmly. It was arguments too: the shouting and pleading, the guilt she shouldn't have had to feel for trying to help him, and more and more the anger he knew exactly how to provoke. If those are over, she can get used to the quiet.

Eventually.

She's looking helplessly at the contents of the fridge, and Peter's just raised the idea of takeout, when the doorbell rings.

She can't believe how instantly the _hope_ rises in her. "Do you think he'd..."

Peter strides over to answer it. But it's only a courier girl, with a mailing tube and a clipboard to sign.

"What's that?" El asks as Peter stands turning it in his hands.

"Neal's idea of a joke," he says shortly, and opens it. Out comes a roll of oil painting, and rolled out on their dining table—

They both stare. St George on his horse, his spear piercing the heart of the dragon: a shape dark and twisted and startlingly _small_. It claws at the spear, cringing under the saint's heel, stretching out its neck for one last desperate bite before it's killed.

El breaks the silence with a stunned, "Honey, that really looks like..." A Rafael. On their dining table.

Peter whirls away, whirls back. Defensively he says, "He said he couldn't get it if he wasn't free. Of course I didn't trust him if he was. Would you? Would anyone?"

She frowns, trying to understand. "So is he just... keeping his promise? Or is he trying to prove himself to you somehow?"

"Or gloating," Peter says, and picks up the mailing tube again. The address is behind a plastic pocket: he rips it off, and unfolds the paper on a letter.

El crowds beside him to read it. But it's not Neal's writing; it looks like an older woman's. "Does he have a mother?" she wonders in surprise.

Cynically Peter says, "Neal Caffrey wasn't born. He stowed away on a stork's delivery, stealing silver spoons from other baby's mouths."

She laughs faintly, rubbing his back, and together they read.

> _Dear Agent and Mrs Burke,_
> 
> _Neal asked me to send you this. He didn't say why._
> 
> _He also said if anyone could find him it'd be you, so he insisted I save you the trouble of looking for me, by telling you everything I know about where he's gone. Right now he's meeting Kate Moreau at an airstrip by the Hudson, hanger—_

Peter grabs at the back of a chair with a heavy thud.

"What is it?" El asks. Then on a horrifying thought: "You don't think he was on that plane, do you?" People have been talking about it all afternoon, worried it's another abolitionist attack. But why target a small plane and explode it over the water? The authorities are saying it's probably a mechanical fault, something gone wrong during takeoff.

"Hanger four," Peter says. "A bulletin went out. The flight plan was for one pilot, one passenger. Fake names, but— Female and male."

Faintly she plucks the letter out of his hand to read it again:

> _Right now he's meeting Kate Moreau at an airstrip by the Hudson, hanger 4. By the time you read this they'll be long gone._
> 
> _Finally he asked me to tell you he's sorry about everything. He says you're good people. So I want you to know that so is Neal. He's made mistakes, but he's paid for them now. Please, please let him keep the freedom he deserves._
> 
> _Yours sincerely,_
> 
> _A Friend_

"She... She doesn't say he was going to get _on_ the plane," El says uncertainly.

"It wouldn't be the first time he's faked his own death."

They stand rereading the letter and staring at the priceless painting brought to their door by a courier girl not that much more trustworthy than Neal.

"El," Peter starts helplessly.

"We've got to _know_ ," she agrees. "Whatever we do about it."

He kisses her in relief. "I'll report him missing and talk to the FAA."

*

The investigation goes unbelievably slowly. Weeks pass. The FAA and NTSB are still diving for pieces of the plane, Peter's contacts find no trace of Neal or Kate inside or outside the country, and Peter himself grows more and more distant. He tries, bringing his work home instead of staying late at the office, but he's not always there in spirit.

Neither of them are. She misses Neal, sometimes desperately.

For someone who's left such a gaping hole in their lives, he's left very little else behind. Sometimes she even lifts a picture frame off the wall, just to hunt for the edges where he painted over his sketches. And she feels sick again: not remembering her nightmare, but remembering that moment she shoved him and he hit his head. And it's not like she wasn't justified — but she also remembers believing nothing could ever justify hitting a slave, and she can't remember when she changed her mind.

She can't get her head straight. Her thoughts buzz in tumultuous circles. It's so much easier just to be angry at him for running, for making them think—

But if he's really— If it's true and it's her fault—

And then suddenly one Saturday morning Jones brings a tape to their door and they're listening to it, her and Peter on the couch with their fingers entwined so hard it hurts and she wouldn't give up the pain for all the world.

The black box is recording in the cockpit and all the sounds are coming from the distance of the main cabin. _Neal!_ is the first that's at all clear, and the woman's delight is clearer yet. ("That's Kate," Peter murmurs, unnecessarily.) And then her dismay: _What have they done to you?_

 _It's not— not their fault._ And that's Neal. It's Neal, though his voice is ragged and desperate and so achingly familiar that El doesn't at first register what he's saying. She can't tell whether the next faint sound is a laugh or a sob. _Some con artist I am. Can't even—_ A brief, muffled exchange, and he pleads, _Kate—_

 _Were you followed?_ she asks in alarm.

_No! No, but he always— Oh, God. Kate, if he catches you helping me escape—_

_He won't,_ she says, and her voice is unyielding steel.

_Kate—_

But whatever he says next is drowned out by a rumble: El's heart stops; really skips a literal beat, but then she remembers the plane is still on the ground. It must be the door closing, and sure enough it ends with a slam and a click and a thump. Kate adds, _Sit down and read this._

_What is it?_

_In-flight safety card._ Her footsteps approach the microphone recording, and then they hear her checking her instruments, talking to flight control, taking off.

El hugs in tight to Peter's shoulder, and his arm slips around her. She wants so much to believe that Neal's using these few minutes to slip out somehow. Somehow slip out of the plane without Kate noticing, without leaving any trace — but she knows it's only wishful thinking. Knows it even before Neal's voice is suddenly there again, right by the microphone this time with a soft but clear, _Hey._

 _Hey,_ Kate replies.

They're in the air. And El remembers Jones standing on their doormat, the tape in his hand, telling them in Bureau-approved sober unambiguity, "He was there when it exploded. He would have been killed instantly."

(He still obviously blames himself, though Peter's told him — they both have — that it's not his fault. Neal's the one who ran.

(El's the one who pushed him.)

 _Look there,_ Kate says, her tone a fond teasing. _That's freedom._

 _It's beautiful,_ he says wistfully.

_We can put everything behind us._

_Kate, I need to say some things._

_Neal—_

_I know. Kate, I know. Please._ There's a silence, and El holds her breath for Kate to give him permission. She must, and he says, _I loved them._

El's barely had time to grasp at that small bittersweet consolation before Kate accuses, _They hurt you,_ and she's flinching instead.

He answers matter-of-factly, _I'm— I_ was _their slave. I thought I could work around it and they thought they could ignore it, but you can't. It poisons everything, and it—_ He breaks off. _It doesn't matter anymore. This isn't what I wanted to say. I loved them, and I— I never lied to them._

El's face is wet with tears and she doesn't dare reach for the tissues for fear of missing—

_Kate, I gave them everything._

_We'll get it back._

_I can't. I can't let them down—_

_Shh. Come here. It's time for me to kiss you._ He doesn't object, but at least they kiss in merciful silence. Then Kate murmurs, _Close the door._

He forces a laugh. _What, so no-one sees us?_

 _Exactly,_ she teases.

He laughs again. The door closes. The silence resumes.

And then it stops.

*

El leaves another voice mail for Mozzie, not knowing if he'll ever hear it.

(She's left a dozen messages since the plane accident. Only once did Mozzie answer, and then all he said about Neal was a quote from Eric Hoffer: "We feel free when we escape, even if it be but from the frying pan into the fire."

(It's either the most inappropriate epigraph she's heard in her life, or the most appropriate.)

*

Peter takes her to Madison Square Park. They walk along the paths and she gets the feeling they're not just here for a picnic. "What are you looking for?" she asks.

"A statue," he says, and shakes his head. "I don't know, maybe it was just another— There."

It's a bronze violinist, and around one of its fingers a circle less weathered than the rest of the metal gleams in testimony that a ring was here not that long ago.

"He can't have taken it himself," she says when Peter's explained what Neal said about it. "He told Kate he gave us everything."

"He didn't have time, anyway." Unhappily he brushes a fleck of dark plaster out of the fold between two bronze fingers and inspects it. "But Mozzie could have. Or 'A Friend'."

"But he told you it was all yours, and he told Kate he never lied to us."

"Well, _someone_ obviously knew about it."

She can't argue with that. "Didn't that Jubilee group get a big anonymous donation a few days ago?"

He grimaces at the mention of them: it's a pet peeve. "They're just buying up slaves wholesale, no questions asked. I know some of them will be harmless, but God only knows what other kinds of thugs they're just letting loose on the street."

"I know," she says, and reluctantly makes herself add, "but at least they're following their principles. I— I'm not sure we always did."

Peter sighs heavily. "I said some things," he confesses. She rubs his arm sympathetically: they both did. "—But El, what were we supposed to do? He never went a month without trying to escape."

And he always swore everything was fine, right up to the moment it was obvious everything wasn't. For all she tries, she can't figure out when it was they all went so wrong. She could be running it over in her head for years and never know; and Neal would still be dead. Thoughtfully she says, "I think it's more about what we do now."

"Okay, but I'm an FBI agent. People break the law, I catch them: that's my job. If we were in Europe, fine, I'd throw them in prison as many times as it takes. But this is America. Slavery's what we've got. We can't let people get away with murder just because we don't like the system."

And Peter wouldn't be Peter if he did. His job's as much a part of him as El's is of her. She says, "I heard Yvonne's trying to set up a Free Trade catering business."

"Really?"

"Yeah. I mean, I love the idea. Imagine an event where _all_ the workers were getting paid, from the decorators to the cleaners, and all the food and the flowers — everything — came from Free Trade sources."

"Sounds like I'd need to rent a tuxedo," Peter jokes.

"That's just it. Anyone who could afford to throw their money away on something so expensive would be using a more established company. Maybe Burke's Premiere Events could get the occasional event like that. But you can't maintain the contacts you need off occasional events. And I just can't figure out any way to run a whole business like that without going bust."

And it's not like the Bureau's handing them a fortune any time soon. Most of Neal's stash turns out to be high enough profile to be easily traceable to its rightful owner, if not to the precise person he stole it from. Peter and El will still get something eventually, probably more than enough to repay their second mortgage. But there are processes to follow, forms to fill out, taxes to pay. It might easily be a few years away.

"Well," Peter says, "at least we can say we're never going to have our own slave again."

It's something, she agrees. Even if it's as insubstantial as this missing ring, evidence in its absence that once, however long ago, Neal was here. She strokes the cool bronze fingers and turns with a sigh—

And stops short, feeling as if all that air is gone and never to return. In front of her is Neal's ballpoint pen sketch come to life: the fountain with its glints of rainbow; the park bench facing it, empty, waiting. It's exactly, _exactly_ as it was on the wall of their lounge.

Peter's seen it too. He stands still beside her as tears prick her eyes and she swallows a thick lump in her throat.

"I don't think I'm ever going to stop missing him," she says.

His hand slips into hers and squeezes. Neither will he.

They end up eating their picnic on that bench, watching the fountain play and remembering Neal. Blue sky reflects in the ripples on the pond, and the water sprays high; above them a pigeon's wings whirr in flight.


End file.
